But last week they took time out to put their personal best to the test at Resurrection Baptist in Parkside. From North, South and West Philadelphia they came; from Mount Airy and from Germantown, bearing main dishes, salads and desserts.
Pat Davis of the Open Door Sanctuary Kitchen brought a vegetarian taco salad made with seitan; and Curtis Robinson Sr. of Mount Carmel Baptist Church in West Philadelphia brought the shrimp scampi that has made him especially welcome at all sorts of gatherings.
Marlene Harley of Living Water United Church of Christ in North Philadelphia set a new record: In the salads category, her signature chicken salad won first place and her potato salad took second.
Renai Ellison, of the MyPHL17 television program Better Philly, judged the first two categories while chef and cookbook author Delilah Winder, of Delilah's Southern Cuisine, judged the desserts.
After that, the contest entries were served for lunch.
There was sweet potato pie, beef tenderloin, honey-barbecue chicken, raspberry pasta, mango salad, fruit pie, double chocolate cake and Doris Shepard's prize-winning Six Layer Coconut Cake. (See recipe.)
No broccoli, no spinach, not even any collards.
As they ate, the volunteers chatted about the way eating together and rejoicing in traditional recipes bound their families together - as the lack of food splits today's families apart.
As a girl, Rose Stephens, 87, cooked while her parents and older siblings worked their North Carolina farm. That's where she perfected her rum cake, her chopped barbecue and her sweet potato jacks.
"Not flapjacks. These were jacks," she says, describing a sort of pancake that was folded over like a stromboli and then deep fried. Not a low-cal/low-carb dish, but . . .
