Have you ever eaten banana croquettes? Chances are if you've been to a church dinner in Kentucky, you've had the opportunity to give them a try.
My little country church had Homecoming Day today. Once a year we invite everybody who has spiritual roots in the church to come "home" for a special service. That can be a lot of roots since our church was celebrating 201 years. In years past, we've invited former pastors back to speak to us, but since we've now had the same pastor for around thirty years, we don't have a large pool of former pastors to pick from. So the last few years my husband's Southern Gospel group, the Patriot Quartet, have been delivering the Gospel in song during the morning service.
My husband has been singing in groups for forty years. When he started singing, most all the country churches in the area had Homecomings. They'd have preaching in the morning and singing in the afternoon. Sometimes there would be four or five singing groups. That could get looonnnggg! Especially when you had three kids to make sit quietly the way I did then. Over the years, the attendance at afternoon services shrank and shrank until most churches quit having the singing services in the afternoons. Now the group generally sings in the mornings and then enjoys the church dinners. Oh, those wonderful church dinners. You can see a couple of our church youngsters loading up on desserts here and that was just one of the dessert tables!
But those dinners have changed too. Now you see a lot more dishes cooked at Kroger and the chicken nearly always is Famous Recipe or Colonel Sanders or sometimes Kroger too. But when I first got introduced to Homecoming dinners, the chicken was skillet fried before church on Sunday morning and the cakes and pies were homemade. Country cooking - yum!!
One of the dishes you could always find at a church dinner was banana croquettes. I love banana croquettes. I used to make them, but making banana croquettes is a lot of trouble and messy. Now I skip the salad dressing and just dip my banana in peanuts in an individual serving just for me. But at a church dinner you can sometimes find the real thing. Some people make a fancy salad dressing, but most people just slice the banana into sections. Sometimes lengthwise too. Then they coat the banana in salad dressing. (That's the messy part.) Last, they roll them in chopped or crushed peanuts. (More messy part.) They don't keep well, so you have to eat them all right away. I'm usually up to the challenge if I make it through the dinner line in time to snag any of them. We have a member now who always makes banana croquettes for our dinners. But today her dish got mistakenly put on the dessert table and most people missed it. But a couple of those peanut covered bananas were the perfect dessert for me.
Have you ever made or eaten banana croquettes? Been to a country church dinner? If so, what was the dish you liked best? We had some great desserts, besides those banana croquettes. One an old fashioned chess pie. That's what my son ate and he told his kids it had no food value, just sweet and good. But the value of food is not always nutrious. At a country church dinner, sometimes the food makes you remember. Like the wonderful lady gone on to celebrate homecoming in heaven now who used to always make two chess pies every homecoming day.
Ahh, the memories food can give us. Hope my grandkids will have some good memories of Goshen Homecomings when they get older. My oldest granddaughter here did try a piece of cake that she said was the best chocolate cake she'd ever eaten. So there's one good memory!
"I think careful cooking is love, don't you? The loveliest thing you can cook for someone who's close to you is about as nice a valentine as you can give." ~Julia Child.
Every Sunday morning I do a special post on my Facebook page - Sunday morning coming down - where I tell what I'm seeing out my window and sometimes what's happening for me that day. This morning I said I needed to be cooking because I was fixing a birthday dinner for my son and his family. Then I listed some of the menu. Meatloaf, oven roasted potatoes, green beans, macaroni, broccoli salad, fruit salad, homemade rolls, bosenberry pie, and no-bake cookies. It does sound like a lot when I list it all out. But that's how country cooks do. They cook up everything they can think of that they might have in their kitchens.
Anyway one of my Facebook buddies asked if I'd write about how I got it all done before I went to church. So I thought, why not? Then I thought I don't really have much to say that would help anybody out. First off, it was one of those "no make-up and wear whatever you grab first out of the closet" kind of days. One of those "not going to make it in time for Sunday school" days. A "wish my church had early services" kind of days. A "hope I didn't forget to turn off the oven" kind of days.
But I suppose I did do some planning. I like birthdays and I always enjoyed cooking special meals for my kids when they were growing up. I let them pick their favorite foods and dessert. Now only one of my children lives close enough that we get to have a special birthday meal every year so I still let him pick the menu if he wants to. That's why we had meatloaf and pie and no-bake cookies. Those were his picks. As to the rest - the corn pudding because it's one of his favorite dishes; the oven potatoes because they're easy; the macaroni because the kids like it; the broccoli salad with bacon and sunflower seeds because I like it; the green beans because you have to have green beans after you canned them in the summer; the rolls because I've been making sourdough bread forever; fruit salad because well, everybody likes fruit salad; the bosenberry pie because I have bosenberries in the freezer. That was my menu planning. The shopping was just go buy out the grocery store so maybe you'll have everything you need.
I used to be able to whip up a meal like this and make it to Sunday school. But I'm getting older and I'm not as quick as I used to be. One of the older ladies at church told me this was going to happen. So Saturday night I made the cookies, got the meatloaf ready for the oven, and started the broccoli salad. The rest I did this a.m. by getting up a little earlier than usual and skipping breakfast except for a cup of tea and a piece of toast. I didn't read the sports page which is hard for me after my team wins a basketball game. I watch the game, of course, but then I want to read all about it too. Today I didn't even read the comics!! I cooked and it all turned out pretty good. The best thing is there are leftovers. That's good for my husband, because I don't plan to do any cooking tomorrow.
But we had a good time and plenty to eat. That's the way we do celebrations of life down here in the south. We get together and eat. And I cook the way my mama cooked. She used to fix my favorite dessert for my birthday too.
What do you do to celebrate a birthday? Any special birthday desserts for you or that you cook for your family?
Remember you can get a chance to win a copy of Scent of Lilacs by leaving a comment here or on Jocie's blog before March. Each comment on a new post gets you a new entry. And I've really enjoyed hearing from you the last couple of weeks.
So thanks for reading.
My husband has been singing in groups for forty years. When he started singing, most all the country churches in the area had Homecomings. They'd have preaching in the morning and singing in the afternoon. Sometimes there would be four or five singing groups. That could get looonnnggg! Especially when you had three kids to make sit quietly the way I did then. Over the years, the attendance at afternoon services shrank and shrank until most churches quit having the singing services in the afternoons. Now the group generally sings in the mornings and then enjoys the church dinners. Oh, those wonderful church dinners. You can see a couple of our church youngsters loading up on desserts here and that was just one of the dessert tables!
