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Yesterday, I spent 8 hours in this kitchen cooking noodles. Our church does a Noodles with Chicken Dinner twice a year as a fundraiser for church improvements. We have been able to complete tons of projects throughout the year this way. AND I AM THE NOODLE LADY..... I inherited this job from my mother-in-love. She was the noodle lady for many, many years and when I was a new bride, she started me out that first year helping her. As the years have gone by, 32 this December, I have perfected THE NOODLE. I have been on my own for many years now, mom hasn't HELPED ME since she was in her late 60's, she's 83, but I learned from a pro.
Each holiday, I am asked to bring noodles to the dinner. I guess you could say, it is my signature dish. Nooo, I am not going to show you a picture of my noodles, frankly, I don't have one. I don't make them regularly at all. I usually am sick of noodles after feeding them to 400+ people. And I really don't have a recipe at all. I guess you could say, it is all in my head and tasting all the time. But I will tell you that one of my tricks is to boil some potatoes and use the potato water in noodles as you cook them. Understand that the noodles are made from scratch, the broth that I use is off the chickens we cook for the meat going into the noodles and the potato water is from the mashed potatoes we serve with the dinner.
There has been conversation of stopping our Dinner Days because frankly, the same people have been doing this for soooo many years and if each family would put in an extra $100 a year, we would be able to have the same amount of extra money for projects. But, the community, and people actually come from a long ways to support this, want it to continue. This is a time when they get together with old friends, eat a wonderful meal and share stories of the past; a time when they can plan on seeing each other like a reunion of sorts.
OUR CHURCH DINING ROOM
So I suppose I will be the Noodle Lady for quite a few years to come. I've been told I might as well plan on cooking noodles until THE DAY I DIE!
There are worse titles....for instance, you wouldn't want to be known as the Kohlrabi Lady or the Skunk Cabbage Lady....everyone I know loves noodles, and I'm sure you have a lot of people that love YOU! I hope one day you will have the opportunity to pass the title along to another sweet soul!
ReplyDeleteTime for you to be the one to teach a newbie how to make the noodles.
ReplyDeleteJust curious... can you make a small batch for home, or just gigantic 400+ people batches?
:)
ButterYum
Hey Noodles...been a long time since I made them from scratch, but they are the best and Pipey loves them, my Granny used to make them all the time for her lil' noodlehead...ha!
ReplyDeleteSee ya at 'the Shed!!!
Are you from Indiana???? Most nonHoosiers don't KNOW how to make noodles from scratch and they CERTAINLY don't know that chicken and noodles are BEST when served over mashed potatoes.
ReplyDeleteYour meal sounds YUMMY and I'd LOVE to get my hands on a bowl of chicken and noodles RIGHT NOW
I cannot believe you do that from scratch. I can't tell you how impressed I am. I don't even want to boil water to make noodles. They must taste fantastic! Can I give you my address and you can mail them to me? Really that is a wonderful thing you do for your church.
ReplyDeleteJust noticed the dog bone stone. How cute!
ReplyDeleteButter Yum... Because of the expansion effect, I have a hard time just making a small batch of noodles, but I have made them for 8-10 servings before.
ReplyDeleteKeetha... I think everyone here is from Indiana because that is how we serve them, on top of mashed potatoes, unless someone asks differently.. We, meaning anywhere from 6-16 people (depending on what night), take 4 days, twice a day, to make noodles. We usually do 100-110 dozen eggs. What I don't cook, they sell in bags at our country store on Dinner Day. I will have to post how we do them!