Rock Ramblings: Autumn on the Prairies wouldn’t be the same without fall suppers

By Medicine Hat News on September 28, 2017.

Of my very limited and non-existent pieces of paper under framed glass stating that I’m an expert on any topic, food is not one of them. Regardless, after 40-plus years of ingesting food that’s grazed, swam, flown,been pulled up from the dirt or pulled down from the sky, reaped from what’s been sown or created from scratch, my stomach is a testament that I deem myself a somewhat unofficial expert on one of my favourite pastimes — eating.And it’s with much salivating of the glands, not to mention the donning of my most relaxed pants, that I would like to recognize a staple and personal highlight of the autumn season: Fall suppers.

There’s a simple reason as to why in all of recorded history humankind has never experienced a poorly attended fall supper. Just like how birds instinctively know how to fly and a spider understands how to spin that web without first practising their art, it’s been generations of human conditioning that cuisine culminating from community halls will always be commendable. From the Freshie served in Styrofoam cups to those long wooden tables covered in yards of foolscap that refuse to soak up the most miniscule drop of spilled tea and coffee, the fall supper has become a Prairies tradition. Back doors of churches and small-town rinks remain propped open while mounds and mountains of food under blankets of aluminum foil are whisked away to their respective community kitchens where countless volunteers scurry and scramble under the ever watchful of eyes of those who still live to tell the tale of the great feast of 1983.

Seasoned stuffing is doused in gravy and kids from villages and hamlets and all four corners of the neighbourhood compare notes, fabricated or otherwise, about their local crazy cat lady and the most effective means to stay up late on school nights.Likewise, adults who would normally pass each other in the street as strangers pass the potatoes as elbows rub and dinner rolls soak up any excess sauces and sustenance on the corners of their paper plates. And maybe it’s the leftover tryptophan coursing through these veins that has warmed my sometimes frosty heart because as ludicrous as this sounds, there’s even something more appealing to fall suppers than pumpkin pie. When the last fork has fetched that final fragment of food it’s the people that attend these community collections of carousing, cavorting and of course consuming that make these events excellent.In a world that moves way too fast, it’s blissfully refreshing to see that some down home roots have grown deep into the fabric of our community.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m craving a chicken and stuffing sandwich and the bird ain’t gonna stuff itself.

And if you’ve got something on your mind, you can find Poncho weekday mornings on Medicine Hat’s Best Rock, 105.3 Rock3. You can also track him down at http://www.1053rock.ca or on Twitter @ponchoparker