Catholic carry-out brings out the masses – LimaOhio.com

OTTAWA Lines of vehicles snaked around the Ottawa Fire Station on North Agner Street, as the public turned out Sunday in droves to help SS. Peter & Paul Catholic Parish with its annual fall festival.

Due to COVID and also with our construction, we have very little space in there with the classrooms, were spreading everyone out, said co-organizer Pat Maag We just couldnt do our big meals, and with us bringing in so many people inside and with the COVID, we decided to go this route this year.

The festival turned into a carry-out dinner only event, featuring chicken and pork chop dinners.

Organizers prepared 2,000 meals for the event; 1,500 of those were chicken and 500 were pork chop dinners. It was a change from its traditional meal of roasted beef, dressing, mashed potatoes and homemade noodles, served family-style.

This is what brings us together. We have people that come from all over. We have people who come from Toledo, Maag said. They like how we make the dressing from scratch. We have the noodles, just the whole homestyle meal, Maag said.

Instead, Sundays meal included chicken or pork chops, au gratin potatoes, green beans, a roll and cookies donated by parishioners.

Even without COVID-19 looming, it might have been difficult to hold the annual fall festival at the school because of the construction.

Theyre adding eight new classrooms and a gymnasium. As far as we know, theyre right on target, and we hope to be in (the new building) at the beginning of the school year for next year, said Jan Karhoff, co-organizer of the fall parish festival.

The Ottawa Fire Station #100 was ideally suited to handle the traffic generated by the event.

Without the fire department this year, we would not have been able to pull this meal off. They opened their facility to us, which was awesome and theyre all helping, said Karhoff.

Usually, the event brings in $28,000. This year theyre hoping for close to $25,000.

The money raised from the carry-out meals will go to the general fund of the parish to help both the school and church.

This is a fundraiser weve always done, and we typically didnt want to give it up, Karhoff said. It would be a huge hit if we didnt have it. So with our new pastor Father Scott (Kramer), we sat down, had a meeting with him and said if we did nothing, we made nothing. If we did something, we would bring in something. So we decided to run with it.

Construction at SS. Peter & Paul School and the coronavirus pandemic helped push the annual fall parish festival into a pork chop and chicken carryout at the Ottawa Fire Department.

Hundreds of people came out to the Ottawa Fire Station to support SS. Peter & Paul Catholic Parish on Sunday. Instead of the usual fall parish festival with a sit-down dinner, organizers held a chicken and pork chop carry-out to help raise money for the church.

Reach Sam Shriver at 567-242-0409.

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Catholic carry-out brings out the masses - LimaOhio.com