MONTEZUMA - After people throughout Cayuga County pulled down a lever to cast their votes Tuesday, many then pulled out a knife and fork to enjoy one of the many Election Day suppers.

There was food to be had from Fair Haven to King Ferry - an all-you-can-eat pancake dinner at First United and Trinity Methodist Church on South Street in Auburn, the traditional ham and oyster dinner at the Scipio Center Firehouse, ham and roast beef at the West Niles Fire Company, and a Dinosaur Bar-B-Que dinner and bake sale at Weedsport High School to raise money for the 2008 prom.

Cheryl Longyear is the town of Montezuma historian. This is the first year the approximately 65-member Montezuma Historical Society has held a fundraising bake sale.

While Longyear was greeting friends at the Montezuma Town Hall and helping out on the sale along with Mellony Carner, Barb Black and her husband, Stan, she was working on completing the requirements for an indexing grant that became available through the New York State Archives office.

Longyear is now indexing all the minutes of town meetings since the town of Montezuma was incorporated in 1860. She began the work this fall, and the state has given her a year to complete the project, a timetable Longyear is confident is easily workable.

“We just thought it was a great idea to catch people as they were going through,” Longyear said. “The members of the historical society have been great in donating items.”

Longyear baked six apple pies that were hot sellers. “I've had some practice,” she said, adding overall sales had been brisk since they started at 10 a.m., with all of the other pumpkin and apples pies gone before 4 p.m.

“It's like a bounce - they're gone as soon as they're on the table. Just like a rubber ball,” Black said.

It was a group effort involving four across the road from the town hall at the Thurston Schramm Reynold VFW Post. Barbara Donk, Carol Hawrelak, Diane Jetty and Patricia Wilkes started preparing their annual meatloaf dinner Monday afternoon. They opened for business at 3 p.m. and would serve take-out and eat-in meals for the next five hours.

Wilkes' grandson, Dan Dennis, was one of their earliest customers.

And the VFW's prices just couldn't be beat - $5 for adults, $3 for children - which included baked potato, corn or baked beans, roll and cake.

The tasty meatloaf started with 15 pounds of veal, beef, and pork, enough to fill four large roasting pans.

At the United Church of Christ, on Metcalf Drive in Auburn, pastor Larry Bell and his kitchen crew prepared their second annual roast pork dinner. They cooked 10 10-pound pork tenderloins. Last year, they ran out of food with customers still wanting more. For 2007, they'll have some leftovers.

“We've done real good,” Bell said around 6:15 p.m. “We had a lot of people right at 4:30 and that lasted for about 45 minutes. We're going to keep serving, though, and try to sell out.”