QUESADILLA SNACK

After a very long ride (over 500 miles!!) we got to Valley Center, where we're staying at Valley Center High School for two days.
Seeing the whiteboard on the foodtruck after I got up put a smile on my face... The band director, our host here at the school these days is called JAN VERBOOM...
Well... could it be more Dutch or what?
I met him shortly after brunch, and started talking Dutch to him. Unfortunately he's the third generation Dutch in his his family since the first moved here, so never learnt any of our language. What a bummer!

The corps had two blocks of rehearsal today. We fixed Baked Ziti for dinner. I made three special batches for one of the staff members with a serious food allergy, a pan for the 7 vegetarians, and one little pan for a vegan.





It's a pain in the you know what,.. all these special meals... but they're more than worth it. And they all really appreciate it too that we make them something special. They are too often forgotten about, and have to settle for a "boca burger" or something.



At dinner all members had to hand in their uniforms, which were going to be washed at a Laundromat tonight. They do that a couple of times on tour. And not without reason! The unis absorb quite a bit of sweat in this heat, so a nice smelling uniform is always appreciated. Our bus is usually used for this uniform laundry adventure. About 6 people go along, and use up pretty much all the machines at the Laundromat. Our driver Warner, who doesn't normally help out with washing the uniforms and is probably not used to going to a laundromat, filled a machine with detergent, threw in a bunch of coind, turned the machine on,... and then realized he hadn't put any uniforms in.



This reminded me of the Jubal 2006 tour, when we took the whole corps to a Laundromat and our corpsdirector Bert and vice-president Jan were the first ones to come running off the bus to make sure they were the first ones to have a washing machine to themselves (because there were obviously too few machines to accommodate about 100 people). They litterlay ran in, threw all their laundry into a machine, put the coins in, turned the machines on and watched their dirty clothes spin.
The lady at the machine next to them asked: "You're not WASHING your clothes first?"
Only then they found out they were using the dryers instead. Obviously all the washing machines were in use by the members by then. Always a fun story to bring up.
I told it again on our bus tonight.

So far this blog has nothing to do whatsoever with the title QUESADILLA SNACK.
Quesadillas are one of the members' favourite snacks! I very well remember making them on the grill for the corps last year during Championships week. Then I grilled 638!! This year I "only" did about 450. First of all they had a very good and heavy dinner not too long ago so they probably weren't all that hungry, and we asked them to only take two to start with, so that every member would get a chance to have some in the first round, and then come back later for more.

I added a little kick to the cheese that goes into the quesadillas using taco seasoning, garlic powder and oregano. The ones with salsa and pepperoni were a hit too!! That batch was all gone in no-time.




Lights out was at 11PM. To Dutch standards that seems pretty early. I remember very well some of us used to stay up late a lot during our 2002 and 2006 tours. But believe me,.. most members wouldn't do anything rather than go to bed and sleep at this time. Some of them stay awake a little bit, and update their twitter and/or facebook pages. Some of the pictures I posted on the Blue Devils mediabox page have already been used as profile photos on several facebook pages of the members. That's cool!

I'm off to bed too. Breakfast is served at 8AM, so that means we would have to be in the kitchen by 6:30 to get everything ready. Tomorrow we're going to a show in Hutchinson. That should be fun! Very nice stadium there by the way.

Enjoy,

HK