Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Grassroots dining: Church dinners are the best March 28, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:50 AM
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GIVEN A CHOICE of eating at a church dinner or dining at a restaurant, I’ll choose the holy place. I appreciate the good home cooking and fellowship that comprise church dinners.

So Sunday my husband and I headed to St. John’s United Church of Christ in Wheeling Township, about a 15-minute drive from Faribault, for a Lenten Soup Luncheon.

 

St. John's United Church of Christ is northeast of Faribault about two miles off State Highway 60 on Rice County Road 24 near Nerstrand Big Woods State Park.

As soon as I stepped inside the fellowship hall attached to the old stone church and saw the spread, I regretted that I’d snacked on a doughnut at my church only an hour earlier.

This luncheon offered soups, salads, sandwiches and bars. A regular smorgasbord with nine salad and three soup options and, well, I didn’t count the varieties of bars but suffice to say any chocolate lover would have been happy.

 

Some of the bars offered for dessert. I tried the bar with the marshmallow topping on the back left.

Salads like tuna pasta, tangy rhubarb squares and 3-bean, and the spinach-strawberry I chose, awaited diners who could select plated salads and/or build their own.

 

Even the salad bar sign grabbed my attention. How cute and eye-catching and kitschy.

The plated and build-your-own salad bar fills two tables in the dining hall.

A few of the salad bar choices, including a tangy rhubarb square on the right in this photo.

After I’d selected my salad and placed it on a fancy silver tray, I headed to the kitchen where cooks were ladling potato-bacon chowder, hamburger vegetable soup and chicken noodle with dumpling soup from large roasting pans into hefty bowls.

 

The busy-as-a-beehive kitchen crew at St. John's United Church of Christ.

Volunteers were ready with roasters full of soups in the kitchen.

I started with the potato and eventually sampled the other two. The creamy and savory potato was my hands-down favorite, although I also appreciated the spicy kick to the hamburger veggie. I’ve never been big on chicken noodle soup or dumplings. The chicken soup is served at every Lenten Soup Luncheon the church hosts. Oyster stew and chili will be the other featured soups at the last luncheon from 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, April 10.

 

The Lenten Soup Luncheon sign posted by the kitchen. The final luncheon is from 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, April 10.

A diner's tray (not mine) that includes a bowl of chicken noodle soup with dumplings.

Church dinners are all about food and fellowship. I scored an invitation to visit a farm with a robotic milking operation while visiting with church members at my table.

Of course, no church dinner is complete without bread, so diners were offered an array of sandwiches. I inquired about the ground concoction on an open-faced sandwich, was told it was bologna and pickles, paused, thought, and picked it up. And you know, for someone who doesn’t really care for bologna, I liked the spread.

 

Plenty of sandwich choices like ham, tuna and, yes, even ground bologna and pickles were offered.

Except for lutefisk, I’ve never tasted a church dinner I didn’t like.

I notice and appreciate details like the lovely floral dishware. My husband and I learned that once you carry your food to your table on the fancy silver tray, you're supposed to take your plates and bowls off the tray and servers will pick it up for others to use. We even had big, hefty soup spoons for eating our soups. Now that impressed me.

 

There's no specific cost for the St. John's Lenten Soup Luncheon, which benefits the youth fellowship group, helping members finance mission trips and more. Cost for the meal is whatever you choose to donate. Just drop your money in the bucket before picking up a fancy silver tray at the salad bar.

FYI: Click here for more information about St. John’s United Church of Christ, 19086 Jacobs Avenue, located near Nerstrand Big Woods State Park, rural Faribault. Watch for a future post featuring photos of the church interior and exterior.

PLEASE SUBMIT A COMMENT and tell me about a church dinner you enjoy and why.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

A glorious sunset at St. John the Baptist Church March 27, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 10:48 AM
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THAT I APPRECIATE country churches should come as no surprise to those of you who’ve followed Minnesota Prairie Roots. I value their beauty, architecture, history, reverence and connection to the land and its people.

Therefore, I photograph these rural sanctuaries whenever possible. If a church door is unlocked, I’ll take you inside for a photographic tour. If not, you’ll at least see the exterior.

Others, like rural Carver resident Harriet Traxler, share my interest in photography and all things country. So when Harriet emailed images of a local rural church, St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Faxon Township some four miles northwest of Belle Plaine, I asked if I could share her photos with you.

Because I struggled to pick my favorite of the four, shot around sunset on Friday, I’m publishing three of Harriet’s photos.

I hope you’ll agree with me that even on a cold Minnesota March day, these gorgeous photos warm the heart, and the soul.

 

Built around 1870, St. John the Baptist Catholic Church still holds Sunday Masses and has many young parishioners.

In the summer, the church is surrounded by cornfields.

The sun sets the sky on fire behind St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, rural Belle Plaine, Minnesota.

FYI: Harriet has published a series of barn books featuring barn and other rural images from her native Sibley County, Minnesota. To view her work, click here. Some of Harriet’s work will be featured in the spring issue of Minnesota Moments magazine.

© Text copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

© Photos copyright 2011 Harriet Traxler

 

Traveling photo shoots March 26, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:16 AM
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BOY, WAS I HAPPY to meet photographer Loretta M. Verbout of Rochester during an opening night gallery reception recently at the Paradise Center for the Arts in downtown Faribault. She is among three photographers and a painter currently exhibiting at the center.

Although I enjoyed all of the art, I was particularly drawn to Loretta’s photos because she photographs the same types of subjects I like photographing. Flowers. Rural scenes. Everyday objects. Her images have a certain down-home quality that appeals to me.

I was especially drawn to her photo of a country church barely visible behind a field of ripened corn. I wanted to know more about the church and where it was located. I enjoy discovering rural churches, then photographing them.

“It’s somewhere between Dubuque and the Minnesota border,” Loretta said.

Then Loretta explained that she shot the image through the passenger window of a moving vehicle.

I didn’t expect that answer.

 

Loretta shot this rural church scene while driving roads along the Mississippi River somewhere between Dubuque, Iowa, and the Minnesota border. It's in her gallery exhibit at The Paradise.

Instantly, I bonded with this photographer. I do the exact same thing—set my EOS 20D SLR digital Canon camera on a fast shutter speed and click, click, click while traveling. Loretta also uses mainly Canons.

I called my husband over. He needed to hear this, to confirm that I’m not the only crazy photographer who shoots while riding shotgun.

But apparently I’m not to Loretta’s level of commitment yet. She’s worn out the motor on her vehicle’s automatic window. Typically, I shoot through the window given I don’t want to risk dust filtering into my camera and landing on my sensor, plus sometimes the weather is just too cold for an open car window.

Here are two more drive-by images from Loretta’s Mississippi River road drive:

FYI: Loretta’s gallery show, “The beauty in everyday things,” and exhibits by photographers Laura Schenck of Northfield and Catherine Michele Adams of St. Paul will run through April 23 at the Paradise’s Carlander Family Gallery, 321 Central Avenue, in downtown Faribault. Minneapolis artisit Lauren S. Strom’s paintings are also on display in the Lois Vranesh Boardroom Gallery. Paradise hours are 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Tuesday – Friday and from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday.

CHECK BACK for a trio of on-the-road farm place photos I shot recently while traveling through southwestern Minnesota.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Boosting my photography confidence December 9, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:48 AM
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WE ALL LIKE to win.

My husband once won a trip to the Bahamas.

A few years ago I won a bag of groceries.

I’ve also placed in several photo contests during the past decade—a few times at the local nature center and once in a nation-wide competition sponsored by a life insurance company. That first place national win earned me $100.

Every time one of my photos wins an honor, my confidence soars. While I feel quite confident as a writer, I’ve always had some insecurities about my photography skills. I’m a writer first and the photography simply evolved as a sideline necessity.

Today, after years of practice, I can unequivocally state that I enjoy photography. Yet, the doubt still lingers. Are my photos good enough and does anyone like them?

Apparently the folks at Thrivent Financial for Lutherans liked the photo I submitted for a 2011 wall calendar competition. My image of an old cross-topped fence surrounding the Urland Lutheran Church Cemetery in rural Cannon Falls now graces the October page of the Thrivent “Connecting with the Cross” calendar.

 

My winning image of the church cemetery fence. The calendar photo has been slightly cropped and darkened.

“We looked for unique and inspiring images, and yours was one of them,” Tim Schwan, vice president of Church and Community Engagement wrote in a congratulatory form letter I received. “We received more than 300 submissions. Among many high-quality contenders, yours stood out.”

Now if those words aren’t validating, I don’t know what would be. While I may not be as technically savvy as some/many photographers, I do possess an eye for detail that allows me to find and compose good pictures.

Interestingly enough, I did not shoot my winning fence image specifically to enter this contest. In fact, I was unaware of the Thrivent photo calendar competition when I took the picture in late March while on a Sunday afternoon drive with my husband in the Sogn Valley area of southeastern Minnesota. We both love old country churches. So when we came upon Urland Lutheran, we stopped, walked the church grounds and I started clicking.

 

Urland Lutheran Church, rural Cannon Falls

Country churches offer so many photo ops along with lots of beauty and history.

Urland Lutheran Church dates back to 1871 and is named after Urland in the Sognefjord area of Norway, home to many of the families that formed the rural Cannon Falls congregation. Names like Ole and Ragna on church cemetery tombstones point to the strong Norwegian heritage.

 

Ole is a common name on markers in the Urland cemetery.

Another Ole tombstone at the Urland Lutheran Church Cemetery points to the congregation's Norwegian heritage.

Behind every photo lies a story. And that’s the story behind my winning calendar image.

 

A close-up side view of Urland Lutheran. Unfortunately the church was locked when we were there.

I DON’T KNOW the stories behind the other 11 calendar page photos. But all portray a cross, as required by contest guidelines. Among the more unusual photos—crossed icicles, a cross-shaped thorn, and children holding quilts and standing in a cross formation inside a church sanctuary.

I’m hopeful that Thrivent will publish the winning images and information about each photo on the company’s website.

The other photo contest winners are Cindy Carlson of Northfield, MN; Jyll Malotky of Prior Lake, MN; Fred Von Ruden of Owatonna, MN; Roy Christell of Lake Saint Louis, MO; Martin Lohrmann of Philadelphia, PA; Walt Timm of Jefferson City, MO; Lynn Radtke of Blaine, MN; Chris Denning of Helena, MT; Carla Gauthier of Saginaw, MI; Susan Ryan of Chicago, IL; and Anitra Frazier of Dolton, IL.

Now, if you’re wondering how you can get one of these calendars, well, you must be a Thrivent member.

Sorry.

AS A SIDE NOTE, many years ago my daughter Miranda placed in a Thrivent Kids’ Club calendar contest. She drew a picture of alligators flying kites on the beach. I think she won for the very same reason I did. Her creation stood out as unique.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling