Category Archives: dining

I love church dinners. They are a great way to eat out, not spend a lot of money, and support the community. Saturday my church, Christ Episcopal in Herkimer, held a spaghetti dinner.

I must confess (and what better place than a church to confess?) that I have not been attending church lately. But they still consider me and Steven members, so we got a call earlier in the week asking us to donate a dessert. It was the first I’d heard of the dinner, and I said, “Yay!”

We attended last year’s spaghetti dinner with a sister and two nieces. It was the same weekend as Little Falls’ Garlic and Herb Festival, so we made a real weekend of it (alas, those were pre-blog days). We’ve also attended roast beef and ham dinners there. We’ve got some good cooks in our church.

We made brownies from a mix, adding chocolate chips, just to be a little fancy. We responsibly taste tested them once they had cooled. Then Steven wrapped them thoroughly to discourage further tasting (full disclosure: it was not completely effective).

Saturday afternoon we walked to the church to drop the brownies off. Tabby was happy to walk with us. Tabby loves our church. They do a Blessing of the Animals in October, which she has attended, and she has gone with us to drop things off for rummage sales or get prayer shawls blessed. She always meets nice people there who want to pet her, so the church has earned the Tabby Paw Print of Approval (more full disclosure: Tabby is a very nice dog who often meets people that want to pet her).

The sauce smelled enticing, and we could see a number of delicious-looking desserts had already been dropped off. A sign was posted warning one dessert per dinner. I wondered if they’d sell me more dessert for a further donation.

We could hardly wait for four o’clock when the dinner started. We left Tabby home this time and were among the first to arrive. We sat down with our generous servings, and Steven went to get us coffee. He needn’t have gone. There were a number of very nice kids offering to get people drinks and ready to take away plates when they were done.

Some other church members sat with us, so we had a nice visit while we ate. The spaghetti was cooked just right, not overcooked as can too easily happen at these large dinners. I confined myself to one dessert, per the sign, and that was quite sufficient after the generous serving of spaghetti (I knew I should have told that guy to stop when he was heaping on the noodles).

They were not doing a Chinese Auction as they do with some dinners, but they were doing a 50/50 raffle. We bought tickets but did not win.

Good food. Fun evening. Church dinners, check them out. Even if you don’t go to church, you probably eat food. And you can find church dinners anywhere, not just in the Mohawk Valley.