AF 10th Ward Mystery Dinner

So the Ward activity tonight was a Mystery Dinner... And I did not know what to expect... I remember in YM/YW one time in Casper when I was a brand new Beehive, we had this dinner where we were given a menu with all sorts of stuff written on it. I've later seen it done with scripture references, but I cannot specifically recall if that is what our "menu" was or not.

At that dinner, we chose so many items from each section and that is what they used to determine what we were eating. The problem was, because what was on the "menu" wasn't food related, we had no idea. I can really only remember dessert from that night. Whatever I had chosen turned out to be chocolate syrup and maraschino cherries. My cousin got a dish of vanilla ice cream. She did not like ice cream so we traded... They gave us all kinds of strange utensils to try and eat with and it was quite humorous. I thought it could by chance be something along those lines for our activity tonight, but I am like a cat, so I had to go.

Well, when I got there and a few other sisters/friends got there and we talked a little about it, there were some other theories thrown out there and it was pretty much determined it had to do with the Bishop's "Noah Project."

Sure enough, they shut off the lights and played a tape of sirens, and we were told to choose a table captain. Our table consisted of Heidi and James Boden, Lorraine Pierce, Robin Dobesh, Irene Dalsing, a couple I do not know very well and they bailed out anyway, and me. We were given instructions and told that American Fork was hit by some kind of emergency. We were then to pool together with the members of our table and provide dinner for all the members of our group. We could not use anything from refrigerators or freezers, nor could we use running water, because the scenario stated we had been without these for three days. We had 75 minutes to go to our homes and get into our food/emergency storage and prepare our dinner and return to the church.

At this point I was ready to go home. I was tired, I didn't know what I could contribute, I felt rotten. Irene and Robin convinced me to stay and Irene said I could just go along with them and help them get stuff. So we trekked out and went to Irene's first. We got fresh peaches and tomatoes, as well as some green bell peppers, and some mild jalapenos. Then we went to the Boden's where we met up with everyone else.

The Boden's had a propane camp stove to cook on. They also had grapes and juice, chips, and truffles for dessert. The couple that bailed on us, brought over refried beans and something else, not sure what and we think they went out for dinner... Lorraine brought canned chicken. I walked over with Robin to her house where we picked fresh apples and she had some homemade salsa that we added to. We heated the chicken and beans on the camp stove. We added taco seasoning to the chicken. I cut up peppers for the salsa, Irene cut up the peaches and apples and added the grapes, we also stirred in some brown sugar with the fruit to give it a little glaze. James lit the stove and heated that food. Heidi opened cans and worked the salsa maker (hand crank cause we had no electricity). We had to use bottled, stored water to rinse the vegetables and fruit we used and to rinse our hands. Robin brought one of her solar yard lights. She has a makeshift stand that she made for them out of a #10 can and PVC pipe and it looked like a piece of tin.

It didn't take us very long and we gathered everything back up to take back to the church. There was one group that was there, eating outside, they were using some kind of propane heater to heat cans of soup... Pshaw, we definitely upped them, ha ha. We went inside and even though it was dark, we had our solar powered yard light. We dished up our taco salad, with tortilla chips, refried beans, taco seasoned chicken, salsa, we even had black olives. The fruit salad was very tasty. We had apple, peach, passion fruit juice to drink, and we finished off with a chocolate truffle from Heidi's stash.

It was a good dinner and I wished I could have stayed a little longer but I thought someone was bringing me something.

One of the other groups came in as we were finishing, they were having beef stew (canned) cornbread and a dessert all cooked in the dutch oven. I never really did get to see what the other groups were having, but I do believe there was a good lesson. Even at our table people were comparing notes about what they have in their food storage and emergency preparedness. I'm glad I went, even if I didn't want to stay at first.

Until next time...