A Night in the Orient
by Carly Peterson

 

We did a "Night in the Orient". We started early at 6 pm and everyone was able to go to two classes: Dumplings (pot stickers), cashew chicken, bulgogi (a Korean beef dish), curry chicken, chow mien, table decorating and cake decorating. We have a lot of women in our ward who are Chinese so we were able to use their expertise. We even have a set of Chinese speaking elders and they came to help translate because one of our teacher invited 4 of her investigating friends to come and help her with her class.  Everyone LOVED these classes. We did it sort of like a Food Network show. Each class...besides the dumplings, was a demo with the teacher at the front and everyone was given the recipes for each class and they were able to take notes, etc.

Then we had a dinner of those foods afterwards...the teachers actually cooked all the food prior and we kept them warm in the oven and crock pots. We only cooked 1/2 serving per person that we had signed up and it was good, because we ended up just a tiny bit left over!! We decorated the table with really neat Chinese decorations. I also got tiny sized Chinese take out boxes that were clear and we put a fortune cookie inside and I actually placed a label on the front of the box with everyone's name on it...then used those as place cards...we mixed up where everyone sat so that people could meet new people.