serve & project: March 2010

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Cyber Banquet Festivities from Pullman, Washington

Our Cyber Banquet, in the small town of Pullman, Washington became a festive space for entertainment, dialogue, history, and humor.

My thanks to dinner guests, artists
Reza Safavi and Kevin Haas.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Joyce's Cyberfeast in North Dakota

Serve & Project Cyberfeast #1
Williston, North Dakota, Chinese New Year Celebration, at the Nadolny-Shui Home
guest starring "The Purple School" rewards system

Introduction of Evening
Joyce's welcome

Appetizer
Cong You Bing

Dinner

Steamed lemon chicken on a bed of spinach | Recipe >>
Cucumber salad which Joyce forgot to serve | Photo >>
Homemade spinach dumplings with handmade dough

Homemade pork dumplings ( partial video on how to make them)

Asparagus, shrimp and pork stir-fry (we forgot to photo this sorry!)
Peanut noodles | Recipe >>
Dou-ban-yu (to represent the concept of "nian nian you yu", i.e. abundance year after year)
(again, we forgot to take a photo, but click here for a beautiful photo of someone else's "failure" - it seems way too beautiful to have been a failure)

Happy New Year!

So many of the kids remembered how to say "xin-nian-kuai-le" that we needed a tie breaker. There were 10 kids at the get-together. All were girls except for Connor. Connor got the prize for being the only boy at the event (and surviving!).

Dessert

Oranges (Chinese desserts are often "just" fruit)
Sticky cake "nian gao" recipe >>

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

The Small But Mighty Meal

Napkin Depicting Dinner Objects by Io Palmer

Napkin Book by Kevin Haas

Dinner Napkin by Reza Safavi

So many people were out of town the night of our first Cyber Feast.
Two dear friends and colleagues came over to my apartment to celebrate and support Serve and Project.
The three of us, we traveled first to Chicago for Patrick's soup feast.
Then we went to Boston where Lisa was hosting a dinner ala Hamentashen cookies.
After we surfed to Minneapolis where Priscilla was hosting a grand and colorful potluck !

Back at my place, my friends and I feasted on:
Lamb Burgers with Melted Blue Cheese
Roasted Potatoes
Tomato Salad
and
Stir-fried Greens

An understated and wonderful feast.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The Wine Tasting That Became My Banquet

I love when things come together. They are little coincidences. In my head I see them as atoms and when they collide, they become molecules...or maybe, just something bigger. They aren't really big things. Nothing like discovering penicillin, but more like when your first angel food cake finally turns out right or the first time you make a loaf of bread that is nothing short of wow. The relationship just seems to fit together like a recipe or a puzzle.

When I received the invitation for the cyber banquet I also received an invitation by an acquaintance for food and wine at the appointed time. It was really a wine tasting with food, but we didn't want to decline. So, it became the banquet. At the same time, I also received a starter for Amish Friendship Bread. Since it appeared that the food end of things was completely covered, I didn't make the bread for the banquet. But I did do a lot of searching on the internet about it and somehow I feel that that story makes sense in this context.

I had never heard of Amish Friendship Bread, so when I got a starter from a friend I looked at the recipe and declared "there's enough leavening in here to make this, so what does the starter do?" And off I went to the internet to learn about the history of this bread.

Amish Friendship Bread is not Amish, nor is it what I would consider real bread. The starter is yeast based and is fed with enough milk, sugar and flour, so that every 10 days, the owner shares it with 3 friends. One person commented that it was a chain letter of sorts. Another person said that they made the bread recipe with and without the starter and the breads tasted the same. So, ultimately, it all seems to be about sharing with friends. And this blog and project is about sharing and friends.

Here are photos from the gathering hosted by Dan and Laurie Crooke who live 20 or so miles east of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.