Thanks for reporting the issues.
Regarding #1, the database tables are set up during activation, using the WordPress dbDelta command, so it will only modify the tables if it detects a change from what is in my code versus the existing table format. Not sure if it will downgrade back to a smaller varchar size or not without testing. I know that I have increased the size of some fields in the past, and it has detected that change and updated the tables accordingly, but I haven’t tried going back the other way (making fields smaller).
Those fields were never intended for storing large amounts of text when I first programmed it, since they were mostly used for school staff lunches to indicate a specific dish the volunteer was providing. I could probably bump up the size to what you have it set to in the next release without negatively affecting any current installs.
#2 is easy enough to fix with stripslashes. Thanks for the heads up on that.