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    Noodling
August 15, 2009

Oodles of noodles at FUMC

Raising funds for missions

Jayne Boykin

DUNCAN — Monday will be a fun, floury fellowship day at First United Methodist Church when members of United Methodist Women and any other volunteers they can recruit will don their aprons and be up to their elbows in dough for the 44th annual chicken-noodle dinner coming up in October.

The noodles are always made in advance, dried and packaged, ready to be married with the remaining ingredients on the day of the dinner.

Betty Davis, church hostess, has the routine down pat. After all, she’s been doing it for most of the 43 years the annual dinner has taken place.

“It takes 500 pounds of flour, 36 quarts of half-and-half, 30 dozen eggs and a bit of salt — though not much. We use a big mixer with a dough hook. We start with mixing the eggs and the half-and-half until it’s kind of foamy, then gradually add the flour to make a smooth dough.

“We make our dough a little stickier than most home cooks would, to make it easier to roll,” she said. “Otherwise, it would wear people out trying to roll it out thin enough.”

Plenty of flour on the boards and rolling pins keep the dough from sticking too badly, she said.

Davis insists on the flour for the dough being sifted and measured properly. The sifted flour is piled gently into a dry-measure cup, then leveled off with the back of a knife.

“They have to count the cups. If they lose track, they have to start all over,” she said with a smile.

“We always make our own noodles. You can’t buy a decent dried noodle, and I don’t like the frozen ones.”

Tables will be set up in Callan Hall on Sunday to be ready for the work to start at 8:30 a.m. Monday. Kristin Kirkland is this year’s chairman for the dinner that raises funds for missions.

“It’s a UMW — United Methodist Women — project, but for noodle day, UMW might as well stand for United Men and Women, as it takes everybody to get the work done. The men are busy setting up and washing dishes and doing everything else they can while the women are doing the mixing and rolling and cutting. Although it’s sponsored by UMW, it’s a full, church-supported endeavor,” she said.

More than 100 people participate in the fun and fellowship for the noodle-rolling and later for the dinner itself, which serves 2,000 people each year — half dine-in and half take-out meals.

After the noodles are hand-rolled and cut, they are laid out on paper all over the kitchen and dining hall to dry.

“We tie up Callan Hall for a full week. We have to make sure the noodles are good and dry before we bag them up. It’s a real time crunch, as so many activities take place in Callan Hall. We always roll the noodles before the fall schedule starts, right after the first day of school, so the moms are free to help,” Kirkland said.

The Sunday before the dinner, 500 pounds of whole fowls are taken home by volunteers to be cooked and boned, then the meat is returned to the church kitchen to be used in the final product.

On the big day, 60 four-quart roasters are set up all over the church, wherever there’s an electrical outlet. The meat, along with cream of chicken soup, cream of celery soup, broth and black pepper — but no salt, Davis said — is brought to a boil to cook the noodles to just the right stage, not too soft and not too firm. Because many of the diners have been partaking of the chicken-noodle dinners for most of the years that they have been held, expectations are high and the volunteers strive to meet those expectations, she said.

“Mildred Young started the first dinner in 1961. We fed 600 the first year with beans and cornbread and chicken and noodles. The chicken and noodles ran out but some of the beans and cornbread were left, so it was plain what people wanted,” Davis said.

There are always at least 250 homemade desserts — mostly pies — to go along with the main event, she said.

Serving is continuous from 11 a.m. to about 6 p.m., as many people prefer to pick up their meals in the afternoon when things slow down a bit from the lunch rush, parking is not a problem and there’s no waiting.

“If half of the meals were not takeout, we couldn’t feed everyone,” Davis said.

Tickets will be available closer to time for the dinner, but would-be diners should purchase them quickly, as they go fast.

Anyone who would like to volunteer for the noodle-making or the cooking and serving in October is welcome. For information, call Kirkland at 656-0048.

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