The Contest to Encourage Gluttony

On Sunday the time for our decathlon team dinner arrived with a whoosh. The afternoon found us isolating ourselves in the kitchen and dining room with sheets over doorways and signs begging you not to enter or to your peril. We set to work. I was on the decorating team with Amy, Vanlora, and Clyde, while Diane, Kimberly, and Adam were on the cooking team. We rushed about, taping, debating, draping, centering, cutting and on and on, throwing the dining room into confusion until it was revealed at the time of letting the others in. If you had been amongst that lucky group, after being invited to leave your shoes by the door, you would have entered and come upon a quaint sight. Three coffee tables, their tops golden with wrapping paper, were surrounded by pillows for seating (with a similarly golden, yet higher up table for the duty couple and one of the judges). Cloth napkins fanned out at each spot, with glasses for drinking and shallow goblets for rinsing you fingers. Tealights flickered inside red and lilac swirls of vellum, while tall candles wavered on the mantlepiece. Oriental scarves were draped along the walls, with Japanese lanterns looping down from the ceiling. The ugly fireplace was covered up by a curiously patterned skirt, and the mantlepiece was adorned with flowers beside the candles, with a bright fan from Thailand of yellow, blue, and green, hanging beside a black framed picture of an Indian man wearing orange. A fountain bubbled in the corner on a covered table, and ethnic music washed gently in the background of the whole scene. Now I should have told you that you could have skipped all that, to avoid meticulous details, but now I guess it's too late. Haha, stinks to be you!

The time began. Adam, dressed in a brown shift and his face darkened with shoe polish, opened it in his head bobbing Indian accent by welcoming everyone to the Swat-Asian Restaurant, and directing people to use their right hand while eating with their fingers (silverware was provided for the boring). I stood in a corner with a ready water pitcher, my Japanese coat's long sleeves dangling gracefully as I carefully poured water from a large glass pitcher into many glasses, hoping fervently that I wouldn't spill any on a poor guest's lap. Either the pitcher was heavy or I'm really weak, but the next day my arm was sore from the strain of pouring with such control. Fortunately I didn't dampen anyone's evening.

The courses were served: Thai pizza, which surprised even the noble chef Diane when it proved to be quite spicy, plus scrumptious Asian salad (I'm sorry I don't remember what was in it except that it had almonds and a lot of people said it was good), and shishkabob style chicken with rice. Finally (according to my memory) there was a dessert of banana rolls, which sounds gross but they really are quite tasty, as well as icecream. Of course there was also plenty of chai served as well, both hot and cold, plain as well as with honey and milk. You see I must confess I don't remember the food quite so much at our dinner because I hardly ate any of it, so you have to excuse me in my sketchy tale.

The rest of the dinner went quite smoothly, as we bustled in and out of the kitchen, checking to make sure everyone was set and no one was lacking anything. Finally it was over, and after the prayer of thanks we stood in a line by the door greeting people as they left, some holding plates of fortune cookies for all to take as they left. There we were, Adam, then Clyde dressed in a brown robe with a towel over his arm, Kimberly in a gray Chinese style dress, Vanlora and me in kimonoes, and Amy in a magenta sari with a bright green shirt underneath.

Clean up was a royal task, as we took down all the decorations and moved all the tables and chairs back into the dining room from the parlor, but we were blessed for the kitchen side of it in that my mom had come down earlier to help with the dishes so we hardly had to do a thing in that area. We were glad that it was over.


One week later, the Jones team came up to the plate (no pun intended) to wow us with their own dinner. It was held in the library, and as we came in and were directed to our chairs, we now found a cosy sight. A long table stretched much of the length of the room (part of the room was partitioned off with quilts) and its wood was laid bare with a long white tablecloth running down the middle, with candles and greenery decorating the center. Cheery fiddle style music was played by a pigtailed Bria with Bethany accompanying her on the guitar. This was the frontier. A fire crackled in the hearth, and a rifle crowned the area above it, with antlers nearby. Old pictures graced the walls, with lanterns hanging from the ceiling in a couple of places and old furniture such as chairs and a spinning wheel letting their aged bones rest in convenient out-of-the-way places. This was the perfect mood setter for a snowy day.

The live music ceased, and after a prayer and then an introduction done by Bethany, the meal began, this time with just a cd in the background. The first course served was good old salad, but it has slipped my mind as to what kind, and as you probably don't care, I won't bother trying to remember. Next we received bowls of tantalizing winter bisque, looking very gormet with a bit of sour cream twisted about in the center of the thick orange soup. After this squash delicacy the main course came, with deliciously sweet cooked carrots, string beans, and the cream of the crop: moose itself. It was like steak but then quite different. It took me an equally long time to chew, however, as it consumed most of my meal-time, but it was still quite good. Lastly we were served yummy homemade vanilla icecream with apple turnovers, and the evening was topped off when the team came in and stood around the room as we all sang the Doxology.


Today the final team dinner of the Yaw Ruths rolled around. This time we were to dine in the parlor, and as we entered the mentioned room we were greeted by a cast of curious characters. Smea (alias: Sara Lee) welcomed us and before the evening was over we got to know the rest of Never Land's characters; all that were home, that is. Megan made a shy Tinker Bell, a shawled Elizabeth proved to be Wendy, a dashing Hook also went by the name of Laura, a dust capped Aunt Sharon was found to be Nanny, and finally grimy faced Dave and Andrew were revealed as lost boys. Dave was in fact the lost boy, namely Peter Pan, dancing about barefoot with a metal stick as he offered to toast marshmallows for us over the warm fire.

One end of the room appeared as a wildly beautiful jungle of plants and small trees, smothering the entire area in an array of green finery. Amongst it sat Tinker Bell, plucking classical music out of her melodious guitar for the opening minutes of the meal. And what a meal! Once again we were seated at one long table bedecked in white tablecloths, but it was heavily laden with almost all descriptions of food. Naturally, Never Land wouldn't serve a few courses like all normal grown ups would, but it would serve everything all at once. The choices were too numerous to decide on everything you would eat: there was pizza, chicken fingers, turkey, cupcakes, cranberry, apple pie, mini cookies, mashed potatoes, stuffing, waffles, s'mores, cake, chocolate, popcorn balls, rice crispies, jello, cocktail meatballs, rolls, carrots, and who knows what else, for this is only what I can conjure up in my simple memory. We could even have beverages of water, milk, lemonade, or hot chocolate. The best part was that we could eat it in any order. Who cares if we have some apple pie first and then round it off with some turkey and carrots? Frankly, I didn't have any veggies--the meal was too big, so I was under no obligations to be healthy. I did leave feeling like the waistband of my skirt had shrunk to a rather uncomfortable size, but whether it was me growing fat or the skirt suddenly rebelling I couldn't say.


Thus ended the decathlon dinner competition, and maybe you can make your own suppositions as to who placed in what. You weren't the judges, however, and as they were considering other aspects than those mentioned here, they placed the Joneses in first, and the Yaw Ruths and the SWAT team (that's us) tied for second. I'm very happy we weren't in third, but if you're rejoicing that it wasn't my team in first, then just remember that you're reading MY blog!