Maronite food festival

My wife, our youngest, and I went to a local Maronite parish for their annual Lebanese food festival. This is the time for local churches to hold their annual food extravaganzas. No less than three Greek Orthodox parishes are having theirs in the span of 4 weeks and the local OCA parish is holding theirs in early November. My efforts to have our own festival so far have been successfully thwarted.

They had a raffle, a register to vote table, a pro-life table, a belly dancer, a dance troupe, lots of religious and cultural items for sale, and food... much food was had by all. We sampled falafel sandwiches, sanbusik (a meat pie), grape leaves, maamoul cookies filled with dates, namoura (a corn mealy cake), and bought some fresh pita to take home.

The volunteer staff was a hodgepodge of giggly girls and older Lebanese women with a take-no-funny-business grimace firmly implanted on their faces. You ordered your falafel sandwich, they repeated it to you either to make sure they had it right or (more likely) to correct your pronunciation, looked you up and down to make sure you were worthy of the sustenance, something was yelled in Lebanese, and moments later the sandwich was thrust into your hand.

We will go back, but will certainly take the rest of the children as there were bounce houses, carnival-type games, and lots of running room.