Mennonite Hospitality

After reading about food and fellowship all semester, it seemed like a natural idea to have a class potluck. "Bring a familiar food from your family," I asked students, not wanting to specify an exclusively Mennonite cuisine. After all, potluck should include some personal variety and there are many "Mennonite" foods that Mennonites have never prepared or tasted. It was great fun to sit around my kitchen table as people began to gather and we peeked under the aluminum foil and saran wrap of the dishes people brought.

Only the main dish was missing--the famed "borscht." Jamie brought sweet tea. Sarah brought bread fresh out of the oven. Kim brought her mother's bread pudding. The other Sara brought peanut butter cookies. Annie brought an apple salad with a peanut butter and mayonnaise dressing that was a delicious surprise. I had a pot of beef stew and a leafy green salad tossed and ready. While the class nibbled on some appetizers and chatted with each other, I noticed another visitor waiting outside: a large, lone Canada Goose. He strutted back and forth at the edge of the lawn. Then, as we watched through the kitchen windows, he began to stride towards the house. Just then Becca and Kate drove up with the borscht. I ran to open the door, but at about the same time, the goose decided to head towards the door as well. Kate, with a huge orange pot of steaming borscht, found herself being chased by the goose in full attack.

"Run," we all screamed, and she made it, borscht intact, just as I slammed the door on the irate goose.

Becca found her way around to the back door and managed to bring the shoofly pie with her. I found a quote from Sandra Birdsell's Katya echoing in my head: "Inside is inside . . . Outside is outside." I had wanted an inclusive table, but the goose had pointed out to me that even I draw the line somewhere. After such a rude dismissal from the Mennonite potluck, though, he disappeared. Joshua arrived after all of the excitement with a crockpot of scalloped potatoes--his mother's recipe--in his backpack and didn't have any goose action at all, even thought the potatoes were delectable. So, of course, we got to tell him the story. Thus Mennonite literature is born.