Corned Beef & Lime Bars

We had another meal at my church last night.  We try to do a meal after our Saturday service at least once a quarter (four times a year).  This meal was in honor of St. Patrick’s Day so we served corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, turnips and Irish soda bread.  We also had shamrock cookies, green jello, pistachio pudding, and lime bars for desert.  Everything was delicious and the diners were quite satisfied.

A couple of observations on the dinner:

When I said that we served corned beef I mean that we served 40 pounds of corned beef.  40 pounds!!  We fed 52 people so that is a little more than ¾ of a pound per person. That is a LOT of corned beef.  It helps that it was absolutely delicious and sliced perfectly so it was tender.  But, still…that is a LOT of corned beef!

Then there were the lime bars.  I made the lime bars.  I used a lemon bar cookie recipe and substituted lime juice and zest.  I also used food coloring to dye them green.  Not just green but deep grass green.  Deep, DEEP grass green.  It looked like Kermit the Frog made them. It didn’t look that dark when I was mixing the batter so I kept adding food coloring.  They were kind of a light green when they went in the oven.  When they came out, they had darkened to this rather bright un-appetizing green.  So I learned a lesson…items made with food coloring will get darker when heated!  They still tasted good and everyone enjoyed them; I just couldn’t believe the color.  I wish I had taken a picture to post.  I’ll try to remember to do that next time I experiment and it comes out weird.

One final observation on the dinner: I’m not sure if it is a sign of the bad economy or if people need the socialization or if they really like our cooking but we have the same people from outside the church coming to all our meals. Not only the  community meals such as the monthly bean supper but also to our weekly Lenten bread and soup meals before our mid-week service.  We are more than happy to feed them and are pleased that they enjoy the food enough to keep coming back.  But we have been doing meals at my church since well before I started going there (which is over 12 years).  It is only in the past year or so that people outside our church came to what used to be only church suppers.  Especially the bread and soup supper. After all, it is only a bowl of soup and some bread.  Nothing fancy at all.  I guess it makes me wonder if other churches have experienced this phenomenon. And if the powers that be know that the economy still sucks and people are in need of help.  I’m happy that we (my church) are able to provide for this need.  It is a wonderful ministry that I hope will continue for years to come. And I’m sure it will…. despite the bright grass green lime bars!