St. Paul’s Lenten Lunches a tasty tradition

SLIDESHOW: Lunchtime sermons

Annie Chalkley stood amid the morning mayhem that during Lent is the kitchen at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, eyed the cap and apron I carried and said without hesitation:

"Suit up!"

They generally don't turn down kitchen volunteers at St. Paul's where 6,000 to 8,000 weekday, sit-down lunches are served during the church's Community Lenten Series. That's a lot of cheese soufflés.

More than 300 volunteers -- representing more than 80 churches -- pitch in throughout the seven-week period to help make the famed soufflés as well as the turkey salad, shepherd's pie and other dishes that have come to identify the tradition as much as the lunchtime sermons themselves.

The Lenten weekday preaching services, which now feature local and national speakers, have been going on for a century, the lunches since the 1920s. For $7, diners can get a hot meal or a cold plate. The homemade dessert du jour is $2 more, $3 if you want ice cream on it (as well as chocolate and/or butterscotch sauces). Proceeds go to charity. Last year, more than $25,000 was donated to 23 organi zations.

It's one-stop shopping for nourishment on many levels.

"This is one of the defining things we do," said the Rev. D. Wallace Adams-Riley, who was called as rector last fall and has been looking forward to his first Lenten season at the church with great anticipation. "There's such a great spirit about it."

I wanted to see what it was like behind the scenes, so I offered to help last Wednesday on the first day of this season's lunches at the church at East Grace and North Ninth streets, just across from Capitol Square. Wednesdays are traditionally the busiest days -- the Wednesday menu always features cheese soufflé, which has become the signature dish of the Lenten Lunches.

Under the direction of Chalkley, a genial taskmaster and the cook-team leader on the day I showed up, I chopped red onion and fresh basil, peeled cucumbers, brushed olive oil and sprinkled seasonings on halved tomatoes, browned ground beef for pasta sauce, sliced trays of cheese soufflé into squares, dished up green beans and waited tables.

And I wasn't working nearly as hard -- or skillfully -- as anyone else.

Volunteers were toiling at various stations around the kitchen; the sinks, ovens and stovetops were engaged. Only a few hours before the lunchtime crowd arrived, the pace was quick and the anticipation was building, but the banter and mood remained light. Volunteer Miffy Hall wore bunny ears.

"The place to be is in the kitchen," said Lisa French, whom I joined at a work table with Karyn Horne and Karen Whipp to slice and season tomatoes. "It's the camaraderie of it all."

There wasn't a lot of time for standing around, and even when I stopped for a second to survey the scene, Chalkley was lurking nearby.

"Excuse me." she said. "No one stands still in this kitchen!"

She laughed after she said it. But then she handed me a chef's knife and assigned me another task.

I left the kitchen long enough to go into what's called the "middle kitchen" where I found the jovial Zarouhi Deloian slicing lemons and chatting away. She volunteers three days a week at the lunches. She's 87. Her husband, Harry, is also a kitchen stalwart.

"I love it," said Zarouhi Deloian, whose family has attended St. Paul's since 1915. "It's my church, and this is something I can do for it."

Volunteering is a tradition with the lunches: mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors.

When she was in middle school, Alice Sharp, 36, began volunteering with her mother, Yvonne Gold, a longtime kitchen volunteer. After moving back to town, Sharp worked in the kitchen when she was pregnant with twins and now serves as volunteer coordinator with Judy Winston.

Charlotte McCutcheon, 82, has been serving the cheese soufflé every year for the past 35. When it came time to fix the plates and hand them to the waiters for the first of two lunch seatings, I was stationed in an assembly line between McCutcheon and her sister-in-law Judy Smith. McCutcheon would place the soufflé and broiled tomato halves on the plates, I would spoon on the green beans and Smith would add the slices of crusty bread.

"Is there a secret to doing this?" I asked McCutcheon.

"Not talking," she said.

When the orders started flying in and I was dishing up beans for all I was worth, I realized what she meant. I mostly kept my mouth shut.

The food is as much a tradition as the event itself. Many of the recipes originated from church members and have been used for years and for a long time were recorded on cards kept on a ring. Now many of them have been published in a cookbook, "Therefore Let Us Keep the Feast" (available for purchase at the church for $10). The fare tends toward the comfort spectrum: meatloaf, chicken parmesan, beef Florentine, crab cakes and cheese soufflé -- a tasty bit of home cooking developed by longtime parishioner Frances Carter that's been served for more than 30 years. A special soufflé team makes an average of 15 pans for each Wednesday's lunch, the time-consuming process beginning on Tuesday mornings with the cracking of 225 eggs.

And, of course, there is the Lenten message.

A few minutes before the lunchtime crowd arrived, Adams-Riley gathered the volunteers in the parish hall. They stood in a circle and held hands, as Adams-Riley led them in prayer.

Dear God, May these gatherings be a time of refreshment and renewal . . . for all those you bring through these doors. Bless all who help prepare the food and do all the countless tasks that make this series, this ministry, so power-packed.

Amen.

Contact Bill Lohmann at (804) 649-6639 or .