Last night we went to an old-fashioned fish fry, the kind that a church does when it's a Friday in Lent. We're not Catholic, but at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, TN, we do have members who grew up in other parts of the country, so they have fond memories of the fish fries done by their local churches every Friday in Lent.
In fact, in our first meeting, we were on a Zoom call. I was in D.C., the Synod rep was in Atlanta, and the church was in the fellowship hall, getting ready for one of the fish fries. I was impressed then, and I remain impressed after participating last night.
We headed out about 2:15, which meant we got there early enough to do a bit of helping with the last of the set up.
I helped put pieces of cake in plastic clamshell containers, and my spouse got the fish fry area ready. And then we hit the ground running.
I was one of the servers on the line. When we started, I couldn't imagine we'd serve all the food, but we ran out of rolls and green beans, which after a quick run to the store, we had more to offer. The same was not true of the macaroni and cheese. We had enough for most people, but the church people who waited until the end didn't have any. We had plenty of fish, both fried and baked, and a wide variety of desserts.
The fish fry started at 5, and the biggest crowds came at 5:15, and then again at 5:30 and periodically after that. We didn't run out of seats, and everyone was seated in the fellowship hall, which isn't a huge space.
It was great to sit at a table at the end and eat with the team that pulled it all together and did the bulk of the work. There was no political discussion, no theological discussion--we mainly talked recipes, since all of the food was prepared from scratch, not by the chemists at Costco.
It was a fun event, and seemed to pull from many parts of the community. The church has 3 more fish fries scheduled, and I'd be willing to go to them all.
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