The Verenike line stretched across the ballroom and out into the front lobby.
Henderson News Reprint
Written by Kerri Pankratz
YORK – Feeding the masses. The Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) was originally formed in 1920 to provide food for families suffering from famine and disease in southern Russia (present-day Ukraine).
Over 100 years later the organization still exists and continues to work for relief, development and peace all over the world.
We here in Henderson do our part to help out with that mission all year long.
We can meat and send it overseas at Thanksgiving, we sew school kits and then stuff them full of supplies in September and send them out across the ocean, I mean, we literally bleed for the organization, well, if you consider pricking your finger with a sewing needle while quilting “bleeding for the organization”.
And during the Nebraska Mennonite Relief Sale, which was held this past Friday and Saturday (March 27 and 28) at the Holthus Convention Center in York, we spend our money. We buy quilts, charcuterie boards, robot-shaped lamps, and 23-pound hams at the auction for hugely inflated prices and a great cause. But most importantly… we eat!
We eat Windsor Loin and BBQ Chicken one night and chase it down with homemade apple pie or a giant chocolate-dipped ice cream bar, and then buy an Apple Prieska or New Year’s Cookies to take home for breakfast the next morning. And even though you already ate a New Year’s Cookie for breakfast (which is necessary because they don’t have the greatest shelf life and need to be consumed quickly) you go back to the MCC Sale for pancakes, eggs and sausage the next morning. And then you hit the priced foods market in hopes of their being a few bags of cheese curds left over, only to look at your watch and realize it’s time for the sale’s big draw, the noon Verenike meal. Well…. It is for a good cause.
Only part of that scenario was based on my real-life experience… honest! And that’s due to the fact I spent the majority of my Saturday at the Sale cooking verenike to feed the masses. You know… just humbly following in my Mennonite ancestors’ footsteps.
The Verenike Department has got things down to a science at this point. Now I admit, we were thrown for a bit of a loop last year with our new cooking location. That was due to the fact we were given one stove and three pots to cook with and were crammed into a back corner of the giant, state-of-the-art industrial kitchen behind our friends in the New Year’s Cookie Department. But those of us specializing in Cooked Verenike fared a bit better than our co-workers in the Fried Verenike Division. They were forced outside in the rain and made to deep-fat fry Verenike in the back of a truck. I heard rumors at the water cooler that they came close to burning up the whole truck at one point. But that was just water-cooler gossip.
This year our Supervisors made sure we had the appropriate space and equipment in order to run like a well-oiled machine. And at this point, it should be a “well-oiled machine” because while talking with our General Supervisor, Tami Peters, we realized that she and her cohorts, Tammy Ott (Justin got to differentiate) and Mike Wall, have been doing the Verenike meal for fifteen years already! How time flies!
Like most positions at the MCC Sale, Tami inherited the job from her mother, Lenora Goertzen, who, along with the late Adeline Huebert, ran the meal for too many years to count.
I can recall Le and Adeline spending several months asking for volunteers to take on the responsibility. Literally putting the fear of God in all of us that there would no longer be a Verenike meal at the MCC Sale. Lucky for us all, Tammy Squared and Mike agreed to take it on.
At my job here at The Snooze, I recently discovered the classified ads that used to run in the Henderson News back in the early ’80’s. The ones asking for old used stoves to be donated for use at the sale.
Adeline and Le always managed to scrounge up some, what they termed “usable”, stoves and would then line four gas stoves up back to back in what was roughly considered a kitchen at the Aurora Fairgrounds. We cooked our verenike on them while the fryers were set up in the room next door, and on the rare sale weekends when it was actually hot outside, those rooms really heated up. It was a constant battle between opening the back door to let in some air and risking those cooling breezes blowing out the pilot lights on our salvaged stoves.
None of that was a problem this year. This year, we had the entire center section of the kitchen with the New Year’s Cookie Department to our right and the Ham and Gravy Department to our left. We also had two, count them two, huge industrial stoves with six pots going at once. And just a stainless steel countertop away from our stoves were two new to us fryers. Procured by one Brad Janzen from “A Runza”. No more dark, wet back alley for the Fried Verenike Division! They had made it back indoors. And above all of our heads was… a vent! You could actually feel cool air if you took a step back from the flame-throwing stoves. I mean, I wore a sweatshirt the whole time!
And behind those of us manning the stoves and fryers was the all-important wall of ten wooden boxes, built by Mike those 15 odd years ago, each containing eight shelves of our frozen little Verenike soldiers ready to sacrifice their lives to our stoves and fryers in order to feed the masses.
Justin kept our colanders full while the Tammy’s sorted and stored. The kitchen literally hummed with activity. The Cole Slaw Department was hanging in there dumping, mixing and stirring. Every once in a while the power drill would start up signaling a new batch of icing was being mixed in the New Year’s Cookie Department. And the Ham and Gravy Department? Well we barely heard a peep out of them and I’m sure they are happy for me to leave it at that.
We were starting to get a bit nervous that we might run out of food before we could fill our own trays and with good reason because according to Kristen and Evan Ratzlaff, in the Bookkeeping/Human Resources Department, we served 731 meals (687 adults and 44 children) what they think is a new record!
At one point, I was stepping out of the kitchen in order to snap some pictures of the serving line when I ran into Parker Goertzen. Parker was sticking his head in the kitchen to make a request.
“The Lenora Goertzen Table requests some sugar,” said Parker.
“Do they not have sugar on the tables?” I replied in an astonished tone.
“Well, there’s none on our table right now,” he answered.
Now that was a problem. You are either in one camp of verenike eaters or the other, the ones that coat their verenike and ham gravy with sugar (the correct camp) or the ones that just pepper the poor things to death.
I was happy to hear that one of the OG Mothers of the Verenike Meal fell into the correct camp. I turned and asked Royce Janzen if the New Year’s Cookie Department could spare some sugar because that’s essentially what New Year’s Cookies are made of and coated or covered with.
“Well, we don’t have any back here,” he said.
I must have shot him a very strange look because he then added, “Well, none in those packet thingees.”
“Nobody wants those packet thingees.” I replied, “Far too time-consuming, tearing open each little packet in order to get a tiny little smidge of sugar out.” And just like that I spied an almost completely used five pound bag of sugar on the shelf below where Royce was working. At the same time that I spied it, his wife Carol, the President and CEO of the New Year’s Cookie Department, said, “Just give him that whole bag of sugar, Kerri.”
Which is what I did. And when I finally clocked out and went off to find my family members, I was thrilled to see my entire family seated at the Lenora Goertzen Table with a now-empty five-pound bag of sugar serving as its centerpiece.
Kelli Peters and Melissa Goertzen keep an eye on the stoves while Jay Goertzen, Randy Huebert, and Jeff Peters man the fryers while cooking for the verenike meal at the 2026 Nebraska MCC Relief Sale.
Mike Wall and Brad Janzen survey the Verenike Department from behind the makeshift wall of Verenike boxes. The Verenike line roasters were filled and refilled over and over throughout the noon hour at the MCC Sale.
Maylee Chrisman gets the New Year’s Cookies good and sugared during the MCC Sale on Saturday. The New Year’s Cookie Department had a rotating roster of young assistants.
