By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
ROCKY HILL — It was the hand-lettered sign that said “Chili lunch,” held aloft by 10-year-old Allison Boyle outside the Trinity Episcopal Church Tuesday afternoon — Election Day — that sealed the deal for Candus Hedberg.
“I saw a girl outside holding up a sign and I thought, ‘This sounds much better than anything I have at home,’ ” Ms. Hedberg said.
So, Ms. Hedberg went inside the small church on the corner of Crescent and Park avenues and bought a bowl of chili. She sat down at one of the tables with Peggy Lamb, Nancy Metcalf and Lenore Danielson — all three of whom live on the same street in Rocky Hill.
The women agreed that they are fortunate to live in a small town such as Rocky Hill, and they try to support fundraising efforts by local groups. The Trinity Episcopal Church’s annual Election Day chili luncheon has become a ritual for them, they said.
Meryl Miller, who belongs to the Hunterdon Hiking Club, was seated at another table with her companions. They had just completed a bicycle ride along the canal towpath and stopped for lunch at the church’s chili luncheon fundraiser.
“It has been a glorious day, and now we are feasting on chili. I am a vegetarian, but I am eating meat and it’s very good. This is the third or fourth year (the group has stopped for the chili luncheon). The chili is pretty good,” said Ms. Miller, who lives in Plainsboro Township.
June Bente, who was leading the group of bicyclists from the Hunterdon Hiking Club, said she is always on the look-out for signs promoting church and other groups’ breakfast, lunch or dinner fundraisers. She saw the sign for the chili luncheon, and “it clicked in.”
This is the seventh year that Trinity Episcopal Church has held the Election Day chili fundraiser.
Sue Boyle organized the event, borrowing the idea from the church she attended when she lived in upstate New York. It’s a social event that aims to get the community out to vote and to talk, she said. It has turned into a fundraiser for the church.
The Mexico (N.Y.) Presbyterian Church, where Ms. Boyle worshiped before moving to New Jersey, held a soup and sandwich luncheon. But because her daughter-in-law, Amanda Boyle, “makes great chili,” she said, the Rocky Hill church features chili, cornbread and desserts.
The event also involves all of the Boyle family — from organizer Sue Boyle to her daughter-in-law, Amanda Boyle, and the four Boyle children. All four children — Polly, 17, Sophie, 15, Jack, 13, and Allison, who is 10 — help out.
Since its inception seven years ago, the event has grown in size and scale. That first year, they served 30 or 40 people, Sue Boyle said. Now, they serve about 100 people — both those who stay to eat and those who take their meals on the run.
Amanda Boyle said the chili is a family recipe, and something that her family enjoys. It’s really a pretty simple recipe, she said — “really nothing crazy. It’s just a chili recipe.” The recipe is about 20 pounds worth of meat, 24 pounds of tomato sauce and several varieties of beans, ranging from kidney beans to butter beans and black beans.
“It has become a game for some of the people to count the number of different beans in the chili,” Sue Boyle said.
But at the end of the day — or the meal — the only thing that counts is that it’s good.
