Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

One of the big fundraising events at the church I went to growing up was the church supper.  There were always a few of these every year and our church was lucky enough to have a retired chef in the congregation to head up the meals.  In the summer it was usually a chicken barbecue that we could smell throughout the neighborhood and sometimes roast beef.  In the winter there was soup sold after church to take home for lunch or dinner.  But the best attended event was the Chicken and Biscuit Dinner.

This dinner involved a couple of days of work that included lots of chickens to be cooked ahead of time, then picked and pulled apart, chicken gravy to be made, side dishes to plan, desserts to solicit from the congregation and all the last minute work that had to be done on the day of the dinner. 

Dinner was served family style and as tables were filled, bowls of mashed potatoes, vegetables, chicken gravy and of course biscuits were delivered and refilled until all the guests were full.  Serving tables was one of my first jobs helping out with the dinners and I often found myself walking around each table offering up a tray loaded with a variety of pie or cake slices for dessert.  

When I got a little older, I noticed some of the boys my age volunteering in the kitchen where the chef was teaching them some of his secrets.  I was jealous.  The chef was from a generation where more men were in the kitchen so t took some convincing to get myself a spot kitchen.  Once I made it, though, I learned to make the most important part of the dinner, biscuits.  These were the lightest, fluffiest biscuits and just as delicious with just butter as they were smothered in chicken gravy.

The biscuits were made in a large batch that involved scaling out the flour, salt and baking powder and then working in the required butter.  This is where the biscuits became a true hands-on or perhaps hands-in experience since the butter got rubbed into the flour between my hands.  I then turned the bowl over to the chef who carefully added the milk and turned the dough out onto the counter to be shaped and cut.  The biscuits were baked until golden brown and brushed liberally with butter before being rushed to the tables still warm.

Over time, our chef turned all of his various secrets over to several of the other volunteers so we were able to take over and let him get his rest.  I knew how to do the biscuits, another person had learned to make the gravy and still others were in charge of potatoes and veggies.  There was always a real community feeling both in the making of the meal, serving it to friends and neighbors and eventually all sitting down to share the final bowls of food.