the church *URP* barbecue

there is nothing quite as...... unique... as the church barbecue. it is a time of fellowship, caring and indigestion shared by people who worship together, come together in faith, and use each other for covert, and yes, even nefarious food-related medical experiments.

you see, the church barbecue is the one place in all creation where you will find food, and dishes, that you cannot identify but you eat anyway.

under most circumtances, if you cannot immediately name the food on your plate, you do not eat it. but when the sun is shining, the children are playing and the Spirit of God is moving through the place, even strange salads made with quasi-illegal combinations of foodstuffs become somehow comforting.




and so it was with me last sunday at the church barbecue where, in the name of the Lord and His holy church, i decided it was my solemn duty to consume overdone hotdogs, underdone hamburgers, and salmonella-inducing macaroni salad.



then came the wobbly orange salad with even wobblier yellow bits in it (no-one ever manage to actually identify it), mystery meat sandwiches, crunchy brown things in sauce, coleslaw, bean salad, rice salad, meat salad, greek salad, potato salad, more potato sala and something called "tofantasy salad". curiously absent, though, was anything called "salad salad".



then there was something in a cheese sauce, and cheese in a something sauce, fourteen different kind of inexplicable rice dishes, a crusty brown object in a casserole dish, objects wrapped in pastry, fricassee of boot and what (to my unsophisticated palet) tasted like fried lego.



several of us then noticed that the dessert table was sagging dangeourously, and out of the goodness of our hearts and the love of our fellow christian, leapt to the rescue. in full-on emergency mode we ate fifteen different kinds of pie, thirty two kinds of cake, donuts (both with powder and without) , stuff with icing, stuff without icing, crunchy things, mushy things, pink-and-green spongy things, thing filled with caramel, cakes made with vegetables, and sixty-six times the daily recommended allowance of refinced sugar; but most important of all; we proved to the civilized world that when anglicans become patissiers, rice krispies truly ARE the most versatile food in the world...



i can't wait to find out which part of my gastro-intenstinal tract cramps first.

care to lay bets? '-)