Grinnell United Methodist Church Dinner Ragbrai

Ragbrai 2011 - Thursday Night

Grinnell United Methodist Church Dinner

Grinnell, Iowa

Chicken and Noodle with Mash Potatoes

This was the church’s 3rd time serving a church dinner for Ragbrai. They were prepared to serve 600-700 riders. There were two dozen people in line at 3:30pm and the dinner started at 4pm. By 5:45 they had already sold 350 tickets. At a certain point of the night they were letting guests know there was the potential of being able to serve more, but they would have to let the already paid guests in first. At about 7:45 pm they sold their last ticket serving 760 plates of food.

Guests were sold tickets and could sit in a very comfortable church sanctuary listening to live Dixie Land music. Numbers were put on the board once a table in the dinning room opened up. 112 guests could be seated at one time in their dinning area. Once the guest’s number showed up on the board they would enter the pie line. Yes, why not pick your piece of pie first. The best part of the dinner… A great selection of 11 different types of desserts. Peach, Raspberry, Apple, Rhubarb, strawberry Rhubarb, Blue Berry, Pecan & Pumpkin Pies, Brownies, Cheese Cake, and Almond Bars. The first pies they ran out of was the Pumpkin and Pecan pie. At the end of the night they had leftover pies that they sold for $2 a slice.

Pastor Len Eberhart stated that their chicken noodle dish was perfected by church members who have done Ragbrai rides before and know what is important to riders. They had a very well thought out system from their 3rd time serving Ragbrai and other big dinners. You could feel the love in so many details. The dinning room had big round tables with a chicken themed center piece. The tables gave you a relaxing area to share with others at your table. It was truly wonderful to open their church sanctuary for the riders to come in and sit and relax, in a air-conditioned area listing to music after a long, hard day riding a bike. Other wonderful hospitality was refilling your glass with water or iced tea often. After a long hot day you need to make sure you are replenishing yourself.

Stop to talk to guest to ask them why they pick this church dinner then the other 3 church dinner being held that night. The top to answers people stated on how they pick a church dinner is location and menu. After a long hard ride most don’t want to walk many blocks to find a place to eat. But some did state if it is for the right type of dinner they will get there. One group happened to have a car so distance didn’t matter, they were just look for the steeples. What was nice about this church was the bells were ring helping you find its location. Some many of the guest stated they didn’t want spaghetti or lasagna and this was what they want to eat.

A special delight was the murals on the wall of the dinning room, the conference room and in the hallway created by Tom Moberg, T.J Moberg and Joe Sciorrotta. The mural in the conference room which is in color depicts the Highway 6 close to Grinnell. You can see two cars on the road. The first electric car was made in Des Moines, Iowa by William Morrison 1890-1891. Not sure if this is one of the cars Morrison invented but Pastor Eberhart stated this was one of the type of car that could be see around here. The dinning mural depicts parts from the bible blending from one scene to another. You can find a bible in a rock, Garden of Eden, the 10 Commandments, and a frog. They were happy to explain and handout more info about this beautiful artwork.