Booya! Twenty Years in the Making

Booya: a simple meat stew cooked overnight, often served in big batches at public festivals

Booyah: used to express joy, triumph, exuberance; especially over a well-played or victorious moment in sports

Booya was not a word I was familiar with until 21 years ago. Our first late summer /early fall living in our current community we saw signs advertising some kind of soup fundraiser for our local fire department. My husband Darcy adapted a fun way of saying booyah that in recent years has become more annoying, but a sure sign of fall anyway :-) 

We often said we should try it and sometimes saw the huge kettles outside a local church as they prepared and cooked the mystery concoction. But we never got around to it. It wasn’t held last year during the pandemic, and when we saw it advertised we decided this was the year to try it. It's the 80th annual and the proceeds go to the fire department's Relief Association. 

Darcy was doing his other local volunteering Saturday morning, so I was the volunteer to check out this experience. Arriving early and armed with my container and box lid to hold it in (even we rookies knew this was important) and some cash, my wait in line was about an hour. 

Between composing some of this post, a little friendly chatter, some research and reading, and plenty of observing and listening, it was a pretty pleasant wait. I am now an experienced Booya participant! Here is one of the large kettles, I think there were 8 or more total, that are used to make the meat and vegetable stew:

The booya is definitely tasty, so the wait and the cost were worth this new taste test. It was fun to finally take part in this tradition, and to enjoy the stew we had been wondering about for over 20 years. And it was fitting that it was a fundraiser for our local fire department on 9/11, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

A somber and moving reminder each year in our community is this huge flag flying over the main highway through town, put up by none other than our local fire department. Thank you for all you do for our community.