October–There’s a chill in the air, fallen leaves accumulate on the lawn, the days grow shorter and the nights grow longer. It won’t be long before the first snowflakes flutter to the ground. Winter is just around the corner.
Outside, there’s a flurry of activity as squirrels and chipmunks are busy gathering and stockpiling food for the long, winter months. Bears and other animals are packing on the pounds that will help them survive the long hibernation until spring.
Here in the soon-to-be frozen tundra, the annual fall pilgrimage to pack on the pounds and insulate our bodies against the cold winter months has begun. I think it must be an evolutionary trait that we’ve been unable to get rid of. Yes, it’s October and the annual church dinners are in full swing. If you love a good meal, this is a great time of year. Here in the Driftless Country we have a plethora of dinners and suppers to choose from. If you’re lucky, none of the culinary events will overlap, and you can partake in all of them. There’s a chili supper, a sauerkraut supper, a pancake breakfast, a turkey dinner, a potato pancake supper, three meatball dinners, a harvest supper, a pork chop dinner, a pancake and sausage supper, and two lutefisk and meatball dinners. Those are just the ones that I’m aware of.
Church dinners are a staple of rural and small town churches and always have been. Even when I was young, the annual lutefisk dinner was a big event at Westby Coon Prairie Lutheran Church. It was the one time of the year when the women of the church let the men take over the church kitchen. I don’t think they wanted any part of cooking that smelly, lye-soaked, water rinsed, excuse for a cod fish. The smell in the church basement while they’re cooking it is enough to peel the paint off the walls. You can always tell when a Lutheran church with a Norwegian ancestry membership is having a lutefisk feed, because all the doors and windows are open, even in the coldest weather. There’s an old Norwegian-American saying that half the Norwegians who immigrated to America came in order to escape the hated lutefisk, and the other half came to spread the gospel of how wonderful lutefisk is.
But all kidding aside, church dinners are great. They are also a lot of work for the members who prepare and serve the meal. The preparation of the food begins days before the first group of hungry diners takes their place at the tables. You need to arrive early if you want to get your ticket and be in the first group of numbers called to head for the dining room.
People travel for miles to attend church dinners and know where the best ones are held. You don’t need to be a member of the church serving the meal, or a member of any church, to partake in the food. All you need is enough change in your pocket to cover the cost of the meal and a hearty appetite. No one goes away hungry from a church dinner. If you do, it’s not because there isn’t enough to eat.
Our latest dining adventure was the Skogdalen Lutheran Church meatball dinner. It was a feast fit for a hungry thrashing crew. We’re talking real home-cooked food when you attend a church dinner. Real mashed potatoes with the skins included, not some institution mashed potatoes out of a package. You plop a couple of heaping spoonfuls on your plate and spoon a couple of huge meatballs onto the potatoes and cover them with dark brown gravy. Add a good helping of cooked carrots to the mix, and top it all off with home-made coleslaw. Add some cottage cheese and applesauce if there’s any room left, and grab a couple pieces of lefse from the heaping plate, that also includes bread. A side note, if you have lefse at the Westby Coon Prairie Church, it was most likely made by a group of church women called “The Holy Rollers.” They know how to roll lefse dough.
At Skogdalen we also had milk and coffee to drink, and a piece of homemade pie to top it all off. Did I mention that most church dinners are all you can eat! Like I said, if you go away hungry it’s your own fault. All this for $8.00 at Skogdalen. That’s a bargain. Plus, there’s great conversation with your fellow diners. It’s no wonder church dinners and suppers are so popular. They’re a real treasure.
The way I figure it, by the end of October I should have a real good layer of insulation to keep me warm during the coming winter months, thanks to all those great church dinners and the wonderful people who prepared and served them. Church dinners have been an integral part of rural life. I hope you get to take part in a meal at a church near you. When you’ve eaten your fill and vacated your place for the next round of hungry diners, don’t forget to thank all those members who make church dinners possible. There’s a lot of work for those involved, but it’s certainly appreciated by me.
Check out a church dinner near you. I guarantee you’ll be back.
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