BELDENVILLE – It takes a small army to put on Our Savior’s Lutheran Church’s annual lutfisk supper, celebrating its 76^th year on Thursday, Oct. 24. Only 480 tickets will be sold, so make sure to reserve your seats before they sell out.

On Thursday, Oct. 3, The Journal sat down with church members Audrey Severson, Rhoda Foley, Lanette Place, Audrey Kiefer, and Sharon Peterson to learn more about what it takes to put on a large scale traditional Scandinavian dinner. Most of the women have worked at the dinners since they were children, starting as waitresses and working their way up to department heads. Yes, organization is key in putting on the meal and there are different departments to keep it all straight. The menu includes lutfisk with butter and cream sauce, meatballs and gravy, riced potatoes, coleslaw, rolls, grot, Norwegian delicacies and of course, egg coffee.

Severson started working at the dinners as a waitress around 1960 when she was confirmation age.

“They usually gave the young girls the waitress jobs,” Severson said. “Now there are even younger kids, junior high and upper elementary, who help out.”

After she retired, Severson learned how to do “all of the things she should have learned years ago,” such as making grot, lefse and sandbakkels.

“Now I’m teaching my children and grandchildren, who are good at making lefse,” she said.

“It was all our mothers that were working,” Kiefer added. “You learn from the previous generation all the tricks.”

This year, the church will order 450 pounds of lutfisk from Olson’s Fish Market in Minneapolis. Gone are the days when church members would soak the fish and skin and debone it themselves. Lutfisk is dried whitefish (usually cod) that has been brined in lye, soaked to remove the resulting caustic solution, and then steamed until it flakes. The end result looks and feels gelatinous. Traditionally, it is served with warm cream or butter sauce. Now, church volunteers buy it prepared and only need to steam it.

“You put a fork in it to see if it flakes off,” Peterson said. “Some of them like it real firm and some of them like it like jelly.”

“They had to soak it and skin it and take the bones out. Now, we let the fish company do all that. That was a day’s work right there,” Severson added.

At the dinners’ peak attendance in 1992, the church served 1,491 guests and 168 volunteers for a total of 1,659 dinners. The first event in 1948, held at the old Our Savior’s Lutheran north on 530^th Street, served 400 hungry diners. A 1964 article in the Ellsworth Record Review noted the church went through 1,200 pounds of lutfisk that year, 300 pounds of meatball mix and 150 pounds of butter.

In 2024, volunteers expect to go through 450 pounds of fish, 300 pounds of potatoes, 48 quarts of cream, 80 pounds of butter, 40 pounds of flour (for the grot, gravy and white sauce) and 185 pounds of meatball mix. While they no longer serve flatbread, once a staple at the dinners, there is still plenty of work to do. Around 85 volunteers are supervised by the various department heads: Departments include fish, potatoes, salad, cookies, butter (yes, butter has its own department), white sauce, coffee, waitressing, parking ticket sales, washing dishes, carrying food to the counter, and bussing/garbage.

“We ask people to chair all the different departments,” Severson said. “They are in charge of getting their needs met for their department. The biggest thing is figuring out where to order from vendors.”

On Monday the week of the dinner, preparations begin with moving all the appliances out of kitchen and rearranging furniture in the church basement. On Tuesday, the meatball department gathers to mix the meatball meat and stores it in a cooler outside on a wagon. The ladies bantered about where the recipe came from: Oslo, Telemark or some other far off town. The spices have been tweaked a bit over the years, but the recipe remains largely the same.

“Oh, they’re Norwegian I’m sure,” Foley laughed. “We can cover everyone that way.”

On Wednesday night, the kitchen is full of confirmation kids peeling potatoes and setting up the dining room.

Thursday starts early with the grot makers right away in the morning. Grot is a thick, warm porridge, similar to a rich pudding. Kiefer helps keep eight kettles of grot simmering, stirring it continuously so it doesn’t scorch.

“There’s a trick to that to get it the right consistency,” Kiefer said. “You can never quit (stirring).”

After the fish is picked up in Minneapolis, the lutfisk department meets at noon to cut the big slabs into pieces. Some of it is bakes and some is boiled on the stovetop. When it’s finished, it’s transferred to a roaster until it’s ready to be served.

The church is also famous for serving its traditional egg coffee, made in big coffee boilers. Fondly called “church basement coffee,” egg coffee is a coffee-brewing method brought to the Midwest by Scandinavian immigrants. The coffee is made by mixing a raw egg, sometimes the shell too, into the coffee grounds and brewing it with hot water. The egg supposedly removes impurities and makes the coffee smoother.

“You can’t boil it,” Foley cautioned. “It has to simmer.”

The ladies pointed out that it must also be stirred with wooden spoon, no metal allowed. They’re not sure why, but that’s how their mothers did it, so they do too. 

When the pandemic hit in 2020 and everything shut down, the dinner was not held in-person for two years. A drive-through takeout option was offered instead in which the fish was vacuum-packed and served to go with coleslaw, lefse, sandbakkels and meatballs. Members saw it as an opportunity to make some changes, since everyone had to adapt to so much change already. The main change was making reservations online. This is the third year the church is taking reservations online.

“It’s kind of becoming a bigger thing, taking the reservations online,” Place said. “I think the thing with Covid, once we could open the dining hall and do it again that way, this was an opportunity to make some changes. We set our limit at 400 dinners. But figured we can do 480 plus 80-100 workers. But it was really a good opportunity there to make adjustments.”

Peterson said taking reservations online helps immensely for knowing how much food to purchase and how many diners to plan for. Ticket holders are assigned to tables and times in order to keep things running smoothly.

“It’s nice knowing how many people we are serving,” Peterson said. “Instead of that day finding out you’d have 900 or whatever.”

Those who don’t use a computer can call the church secretary to be put on the reservation list.

Money raised from the dinners goes to various charities. The congregation votes on a list of outreach ministries, ranging from local to national to global, to support. Local examples include Feed My Starving Children, Basics for Local Kids or Turningpoint.

The women believe the dinners will continue into the future, especially since the number of dinners served has been pared down to a more manageable level. Not only does it keep the church’s Scandinavian heritage alive, but the camaraderie that stems from the preparations and gathering to share a meal is priceless.

“It brings all of the people who are on the membership list together,” Peterson said. “They come out to help for this. It brings people out who aren’t always at church every Sunday.”

Seating will take place every half hour from 2-6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 24. Tickets can be reserved at https://www.oursaviorschurch.info/ or by calling 715-273-4570.