The Third Congregational Church Ladies Aid Society once again served up the best strawberry shortcake in all of Middletown this year, at their annual Strawberry Festival. They made 1300 biscuits from scratch, covered them with 720 quarts of local strawberries (from Pell Farms in Somers), and topped it all off with 125 quarts of cream, whipped. They were served quickly and graciously by volunteers.
Some of those volunteers have been doing it for many years. June Godburn reminisced about working in the Ladies Aid events 60 years ago. She said that starting in 6th grade, they would come down to the church from the Westfield School, at the site of the current fire station, and help serve meals. In those days, the annual event was a full ham supper; Lorraine Andrews (pictured) told me it was "just too much food", and they started just serving the traditional dessert.
It remains as popular and delicious as ever.
Will have to get to this next year. Nice article on a nice tradition.
ReplyDeleteAn alert reader sent in the following helpful note. We welcome such insightful criticism, and wish to apologize to all readers who were misled by our sloppy pronoun usage. No ladies were served with the biscuits.
ReplyDelete-------------
Ahem, your editor-in-chief would like to recommend a revision to the article posted on Thursday, June 14 titled "720 Quarts of Strawberries, YUM!". Author Stephen Devoto mistakenly wrote:
"They made 1300 biscuits from scratch, covered them with 720 quarts of local strawberries (from Pell Farms in Somers), and topped it all off with 125 quarts of cream, whipped. They were served quickly and graciously by volunteers."
Which contains an ambiguous pronoun error. Dr. Devoto had already referred to the ladies as "they", making the use of "they" again in the second part of the sentence ambiguous, it could be that the strawberry shortcakes were served quickly and graciously, or it could be that the ladies themselves were served quickly and graciously, a horrifying prospect to say the least. Your editor would like to remind you that the Middletown Eye nor any of its associates in any way condones the practice of cannibalism.
For the sake of professional journalism, please make this correction at once.
Sincerely,
(name withheld)