Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

I was planning to just have re-heated lasagna for my dinner today, since I didn't have time to drive to Wisconsin to be with my family. Not a tragedy, by any means. After all, it's pretty good lasagna, made with the last of my garden tomatoes that I'd picked just before the frost and brought inside to finish ripening.

But then while listening to NPR yesterday morning during breakfast, I heard them say in the list of local upcoming events that the Unitarian Universalist Church (which is about seven long city blocks from where I live) was having a potluck lunch today, where they provide the turkey and table settings and attendees bring a side dish or dessert to feed 8-10 people. So, I looked up their church website and found the email address for the fellowship committee that was sponsoring the event and emailed them later that morning, asking if it was okay for non-members to come. They emailed back to say that of course I was welcome to come. So, I got up this morning and baked a double batch of my three-cherry crisp (I say that the three cherries in it are tart, sweet, and dried cherries, but to be more precise it's canned cherry pie filling, canned or frozen plain cherries, and dried cherries) in a 9x13 inch cake pan.

My dessert looked beautiful . . . until I almost missed the driveway to the Unitarian Church and stopped too suddenly, so that the covered cake pan of cherry crisp which I'd oh-so-foolishly placed on the passenger seat next to me slid off the seat and landed on one end on the car floor, causing the lid to come off and fall forward, where about two thirds of the contents landed on top of it (while the remaining third stayed in the pan, though it all collected near one end of the pan. I was really frustrated with myself, but since I'd come that far I went ahead and pulled into the church parking lot, where I used my very clean hands to scoop the fallen cherry crisp filling and topping (which was only warm at that point, having been out of the oven for an hour) back into the pan.

I apologetically set my dish of now hashed-looking cherries mixed with oatmeal and brown sugar crisp topping on the dessert table (where it was the biggest and -- to my eyes -- ugliest dessert offering), and then went ahead and introduced myself to a few people and got my plate to go through the line for turkey and side dishes with everyone else (or rather, everyone who was there at noon; quite a few individuals and families trickled in until 12:45).

I met several nice people, enjoyed some lovely turkey breast meat and what I'm pretty sure must've been "Mama Stamberg's Cranberry Relish" (I'd heard the recipe on NPR for years, but this was the first time I'd tasted it), along with some really good green bean casserole (lots of sliced almonds) and a very nice homemade mac & cheese. When I finally went to get some dessert, I got one of the last few servings of my messed-up cherry crisp along with a piece of one of the pumpkin pies and a dollop of whipped cream.

By the time they started cleaning up at 1:30 PM, my messy cherry crisp was long gone (just an empty pan with a few red streaks in the corners), and I'd been enjoying a delightful conversation about anime and science fiction conventions with the college student sitting kitty-corner from me, both of us agreeing that Hayao Miyazaki should be more widely known in this country than he is, and she'd told me about several local sci-fi conventions that I should submit panel ideas to.

Imperfect (my cherry crisp), casual (it was 70 degrees outside and people came to the lunch wearing anything and everything comfotable, with the possible exception of obvious pajamas), ad hoc (nobody brought stuffing/dressing, but there were three sweet potato casseroles), and entirely satisfactory and relaxing: I guess that's Thanksgiving with the Unitarians. I liked it!