McCORDSVILLE — Betty Lou Hoover cradled the strips of dough, following them as they pushed outward from the noodle cutter.
She was satisfied by the silky strands she saw. “Nice.”
Many a Thanksgiving meal begins with preparations made days ahead of time. That’s true not only for home cooks welcoming loved ones, but also for a congregation inviting the community to join it around the table.
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It was noodle-making day recently in the kitchen at McCordsville United Methodist Church, where about a dozen members of the congregation were mixing, kneading, rolling and cutting homemade noodles that will be served during a Thanksgiving dinner Saturday at the church, 6247 W. Broadway, McCordsville.
The annual dinner draws people who form a line about half an hour before the doors open at 4:30 p.m. Between then and the dinner’s close at 7, organizers estimate they will serve more than 300 people.
The church has offered noodles at this dinner and at its annual Lord’s Acre festival for decades. For years, women of the church labored individually at home, pooling their efforts to have noodles for the festival or for dinners that drew a crowd to the church basement.
“They all crammed in down there somehow,” Regina Bowen said, between feeding sheets of dough through a noodle cutter.
In 2009, however, the church built an 11,000-square-foot addition that more than doubled the size of its building. The Thanksgiving dinner is now served in a large ground-level fellowship hall, drawing about three times the average attendance of a typical Sunday morning. But the congregation stepped up to the task of welcoming a larger number of people around the table.
Several years ago, the noodle makers began meeting in the new kitchen to tackle the task together, working in assembly-line fashion.
“It’s fun to do all this. We get a lot of cameraderie,” Lee Guthrie said in between covering tables. “Everybody works together, and we have a lot of fun.”
Catherine Cook said that close-knit feel drew her in a few years ago when she was looking for a church. “You just feel the love when you walk in,” she said. “It’s just like my family.”
About a dozen members, both newer and longtime, met Nov. 9 at the church to make the dinner noodles. They lugged in some extra stand mixers — someone quipped they were an endorsement for Kitchenaid — along with some 10-pound bags of flour and 18-count cartons of eggs. They used those mixers and attachments to combine the ingredients, roll sheets of dough through twice to make it thin enough, and cut it into strips.
About two hours and nine dozen eggs later, they had filled about a dozen covered tables in the fellowship hall with noodles laid out to dry. (Had this been preparation for the Lord’s Acre Festival, they said, there would have been 20 dozen eggs and more tables loaded with drying noodles.)
Hoover later returned to the church and gathered the dry noodles onto large trays. They’ll soften back up again when they’re boiled in chicken broth and served at the Thanksgiving dinner.
The church does accept donations from those who come to the dinner, and from those who come to the church’s monthly community dinners (second Saturdays, January through August) and community breakfasts (third Saturdays, January through October). Those donations go toward the building fund to finish paying for the addition.
But members say there’s no requirement or pressure for people to give. They care more about people finding a warm welcome and a good meal.
“We’ve had people tell us, ‘This is the only Thanksgiving dinner I’ll have,” Carolyn Scott said. “If we can give someone a Thanksgiving dinner, that’s what it’s all about.”
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McCordsville United Methodist Church will serve a Thanksgiving dinner from 4:30 to 7 p.m. Saturday (Nov. 10) at the church, 6247 W. Broadway, McCordsville.
Early diners at the event often form a line outside beforehand. For those coming later, organizers recommend arriving by 6 as some items run out by 6:30.
The menu features turkey, chicken with noodles, salads, persimmon pudding, desserts and more.
Donations are accepted and go to the building fund, but organizers emphasize that is not required and no one will be turned away.
The church’s United Methodist Women group will have a table with cakes, crafts, persimmon pulp and bags of noodles available for purchase.
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