You could say that McKinney's three high schools have the recipe for giving back.
About 200 student council members, football players and other volunteers started slinging 7,000 pounds of frozen turkey and fixings for a complete holiday meal on Wednesday afternoon.
"It's really a well-oiled machine," said A.J. Laudenslager, McKinney North senior and student council member. "Last year, we got 750 baskets packed in 26 minutes."
It's a tradition that's grown over the past decade, though it rarely takes more than a half hour to complete.
Students bring in food they've been collecting for about a month, packing items such as pie mix, pie crust, seasoning, canned vegetables and more into huge grocery bags to be distributed to local churches, which then pass along the bags to members of their congregations throughout the city.
"Each bag feeds 10 people and, with 750 bags, that's 7,500 people we're feeding for Christmas," said Casie Homer, McKinney North's student council adviser.
The students take the responsibility seriously.
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"If you mess up, it's like, 'Oh, well, this person doesn't get part of their Christmas meal, which is something you don't want to be responsible for," Laudenslager said.
This year, the packing effort beat the original record -- the students finished hundreds of meals in just 22 minutes.
