Jocie Brooke here reporting from Hollyhill.
It’s October. That means it’s Homecoming time at church and all the women in the church try to outdo one another with what they bring for the potluck dinner on the grounds.
What’s that? You’ve never been to a dinner on the grounds at a country church like ours? Then, let me tell you, you’ve missed out. The church ladies cook enough for three congregations. But that’s all right. That means plenty for everybody and their brother. And sister too.
Thank goodness, or as Miss Sally would say thank the Lord, we had great weather last Sunday. I guess the prayer warriors go to work for Homecoming weather. I don’t think I ever remember it raining on Homecoming Day. Ever. Sometimes it’s hot, but we can handle the heat even if it does make the icing on the cakes extra sticky and the jello salads melt a little. This year the weather was perfect. Mr. Moore and Mr. Hardy pulled wagons right up into the middle of the churchyard. We put the food on one of them and folks stood around the other one and ate. Some folks sat down under the tent the funeral home brought out and sat up for us. Good think we have a big churchyard. But I liked it better standing around the wagon with the other kids. That way you have some place to set your drink. We had real lemonade with lemons and ice tea so sweet it’s a wonder it didn’t cause a sugar shortage.
If the tea didn’t, the dessert table might. They carried out a special table from the Sunday school rooms to hold the desserts. The ladies didn’t want them mixed in with the regular food on the wagon. Why, I don’t know, but you don’t get in the way of how the church ladies want to do things at a Homecoming dinner.
I skipped all the vegetables, especially the cabbage (yuck), since nobody was paying any attention to my plate. I got some of Miss Sally’s fried chicken and skipped right to the salads. I worried I would miss out on the banana croquettes since Dad said I had to wait and go almost last through the line. A preacher’s daughter has to mind her manners and let those older go first. Sigh. And when I got down to the salads, I found nothing but a few peanuts in the bottom of that banana croquette bowl. I might have cried except Miss Sally, who doesn’t worry about eating so much as taking care of everybody else, saved the day for me. She’d put aside some for me. I could have hugged her on the spot, but I didn’t. She whispered that we needed to be sneaky about it so that nobody would notice and want me to share the three banana pieces slathered with peanuts she’d saved for me. I wasn’t about to share. I’ll practice generosity another day!
After I ate my chicken, banana croquettes and strawberry jello with real strawberries in it, I was ready to hit the dessert table. I did manage to slip in front of some of the older folks then. They eat slower than I do or maybe they take longer eating all those vegetables. Anyway, I got a piece of Miss Jeralene’s angel food cake and a piece of somebody’s cherry pie. Not sure who made it, but they did a bang up job.
Dad has a hard time at church dinners. All the ladies want him to eat what they bring. They tell him they made this or that dessert just for him since they know it’s his favorite. And he maybe has said it was a favorite when we were at their houses eating dinner. But there are just so many pieces of pies and cakes one man can eat. Especially after he’s already had to eat all the casseroles brought because those were favorites too. I’m thinking Dad is going to have to quit bragging so much on the cooking of every woman in church. But he always gives it a valiant effort to taste the favorite dishes of every cook there. He goes home groaning but he says it’s a preacher’s duty to do his best to make his members feel appreciated.
I, for one, appreciate Miss Sally and her banana croquettes. If you haven’t ever been to a country church dinner, you might not have ever had the pleasure of eating those bananas with salad dressing smeared on them and then rolled in peanuts. No country church dinner is complete without them and I have Miss Sally to thank that my plate was complete with them.
So what’s your favorite dish to eat at a country church homecoming? And have you ever taken a dish to a potluck dinner because you knew it was a favorite of somebody there? Maybe next dinner I’ll talk Aunt Love into letting me make some of those banana croquettes so we’ll have two bowls of them on the food wagon – Miss Sally’s and mine.
Comments 14
Hi Jocie. It’s always so good to hear from you. I think I’ll have to try those banana croquettes; sounds like my kind of salad. Banana cream pie, and of course banana puddin’ are my favorites on the dessert table.
Author
Jocie here. I just love your name, Birdie. It’s so cute and lively sounding. I guess Jocie is okay for a name too, but sometimes I think about what other names I might like to be.
Looks like we’re all banana with you thinking on trying the banana croquettes and liking banana cream pie and banana pudding. Aunt Love makes a pretty good banana pudding.
I remember standing around the wagon to eat! That was a long time ago. I’ve always loaded up my plate with the classics: fried chicken, baked beans, potato salad, and any casserole topped with cheese. And now I’m hungry…..
Author
Jocie here. Aunt Love would say that’s okay to load your plate with those, Tammy. It’s just not good to want to skip to the dessert table first. But I do want to get some of those bananas and peanuts. Bananas and peanuts are good for you, aren’t they? I like cheesy things too, but no amount on cheese can make cabbage good.
I’m always hungry!
Do you think Mrs. Sally would be willing to share her recipe with us? I have never had the pleasure of feasting on a banana croquette.
Thank you for triggering a host of wonderful memories. I have been to many pot luck dinners on the grounds in my life beginning early on when I thought the adults were saying dinner on the ground. Could be, on some occasions, they were since there were no established picnic grounds and the food was placed on table cloths spread on the ground.
Have you ever been to a grave yard working? There are two very old cemeteries near our home that have never had maintenance crews come in with mowers, trimming equipment, etc. Church members provided this service and no one spent the day without working. A dinner on the ground was greatly appreciated after working from early morning, real early, until noon. I must say none of us, children and adults alike, were worth much after helping ourselves to the hearty and delicious meal on the ground. I appreciate having the opportunity to see my elders make very clear that respect and upkeep of the resting places of those who came before us is our responsibility. Those special services were set as an annual event. Along with the ladies providing a feast for the workers, many memories were brought forth we as moved along into the day. If those cemeteries (grave yards) are tended, to this day, we do it as we see fit. So many have moved away that it is hard for those of us here to pick up the work of many. But we try. We have one veteran of the American Revolution resting there with other members of his family.
My grandmother always made stacks of fried pies–peach, apple, etc. Mom always enjoyed making banana pudding and fried chicken. So many stories came to light, especially after the meal, when it was time to bring out our crepe paper flowers for decoration. I wonder if people still make those? It was a great deal of work and the flowers were short-lived.
Again, many thanks for triggering lovely, sometimes bittersweet memories.
Author
Jocie here.
Hi, Glendora. What a great name. Does anybody shorten it to Dora or Glennie? Everybody shortens my name. I’m Jocelyn. But everybody calls me Jocie. I mean everybody. Well, except for Wes who sometimes calls me Jo.
I know Miss Sally (she’s never been married) would whip you up some banana croquettes if you came to Hollyhill. She loves cooking for people. But the recipe is easy. Just smear some salad dressing on a banana however you can without getting it all over you or the cabinet. Well, it’s best to cut the banana into three or four pieces first and you can slice them in two if you want. Makes more servings that way and the salad dressing is easier to smear on the flat side. But I sort of like them round. Anyway, once you have the salad dressing on them, then you roll them around in the chopped up peanuts. You need the salted kind. The peanut pieces stick to the salad dressing and there you have it. Banana croquettes. Miss Sally says it’s a very Kentucky dish or maybe a southern one. She grew up eating them at church dinners. That along with pineapple rice. Miss Sally makes that good too.
We’ve never had a regular graveyard working day, but sometimes we’ve needed to. People that have relatives buried in our church graveyard give money to the cemetery fund on Homecoming. A lady who still goes to our church and has a little baby buried there keeps up with the money and pays somebody to mow the cemetery a few times a year. But sometimes it needs extra work and the church people have worked on it a few times. I told Dad about your working day, and he says that it sounds like your way of doing it would get more people out working. Dinner on the grounds is always a great way to bring out people to church.
OK, Jocie, what about pineapple and rice. The Ladies in Pink publishes a cookbook once each year as a fundraiser. This group began to assist women with breast cancer and has been able to expand its reach to other kinds of cancer and to include men with cancer. It is a good work and is work that provides the recipes and the stories with each one. Our recipes are selected to honor survivors and in memory of those who have lost the battle. I always start collecting recipes to help in this effort. Writing the narratives does take some time but that is fine. I cannot think of a better way to spend time than to reserve a bit to help those fighting this terrible disease.
Author
Jocie here. I’ll have to check with Miss Sally on that pineapple rice recipe. Aunt Love and I have tried to make it but ours is never good like hers. Her’s is moist and pineapply. Ours is dry and not good. I think Miss Sally cooks the rice and then adds a can of crushed pineapple, sweetened I’m sure along with some more sugar, maybe. She puts it in a pie plate kind of dish and bakes it. I think she watches it and if it looks like it isn’t staying moist enough she adds some water. It’s not as good as banana croquettes, but it’s good.
That’s neat that you’re helping breast cancer victims. My mother had breast cancer, you know. You can read about it in that last Hollyhill book, Summer of Joy. Wasn’t too joyful for her, I guess. Dad said we should pray for her and we did. She left again and I don’t know what happened then. I had plenty of problems with my mother who never liked me, but I didn’t want her to have cancer.
Jocie, I’m with you on the church potlucks! Love them! Although I think some of those ladies do make some very yummy veggies. I was wondering if you’d be willing to share the recipe for those Aunt Love’s banana croquettes with those of us that haven’t been fortunate enough to have had them?
I always have to take deviled eggs, cause they’re my husbands favorites & the plate is always empty, so I guess others folks like them too. I usually go to the dessert table first because some of the ladies are famous for their chocolate pie & coconut cake, they get gone really fast. 🙂
Author
Jocie here. I know what you mean about going to that dessert table first. Sometimes I want to sneak over there before everybody gets in line, but Aunt Love would probably see me and I’d be in trouble. Not that that’s anything unusual. But we have this member, Emma Mae, who makes hickory nut pies. That’s like pecan pies, but she picks up the hickory nuts and cracks them and uses them to make the pies. While I still like the cherry pie best, Miss Emma Mae’s pie disappears in a blink of an eye. Dad loves them.
And about those banana croquettes, they’re easy peasy to make. You just get a bunch of bananas. Peel them, of course. Cut them up into sections. Sometimes people slice them in half, but I like the round sections best. Then you slather them with salad dressing. Miss Sally just uses the plain stuff, but I’ve heard some people fancy it up a little. Maybe with yogurt although that sounds horrible to me. I like the way Miss Sally does it. Anyway, she smears the salad dressing on the banana or maybe puts it in a bowl and rolls the banana in it. Then she chops up the peanuts (got to have salted peanuts) and has a bowl of them that she rolls the salad dressing coated banana in. That’s it. They are better freshly made. I can eat them leftover, but they’re best fresh. Some people think they sound awful, but I think they haven’t tried one yet!
Thank you Jocie! The banana croquets sound wonderful! Just like a peanut butter & banana sandwich with mayo (I prefer Miracle Whip)without the bread! 🙂
Author
Jocie here. You’ve got it, Robin. I prefer Miracle Whip too. Especially on those banana croquettes.
How splendid to hear from Jocie again! My mouth is watering in anticipation of our church’s homecoming this Sunday. I’ve never tried banana croquettes before, but they sound yummy. I’ll be baking a lemon meringue pie, along with a couple of other dishes this week. My kids all love anything lemon. But a few ladies at my church love butterscotch the best. So I may have to make both.
Thanks Jocie, (and Ann) for sharing your beautiful day with us!
Author
Jocie here. Wow, Lavon. I wish I could be there to try your lemon pie. I love lemon meringue pie. Butterscotch is pretty good too. As my dad says, the kind of pie he likes best is “round” pie. Guess maybe that’s true for me too, except for pumpkin or cushaw pie. I’ll pass on those.
Hope you have a great Homecoming day at your church.