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National Peace Corps Association > News > Polyglot > What are you serving at your Global House Party?
What are you serving at your Global House Party?
By Molly Mattessich on Thursday, January 27th, 2011
To celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Peace Corps, parties are happening all around the world on March 1, 2011. They will range from small gatherings of friends serving potluck fare to more elaborate catered meals with a few hundred attendees.
We all know that Peace Corps volunteers love to eat. It’s what we did to bond with our host families and friends. It’s how we experienced intimately the cultures in which we lived.
Now you can share that experience by sharing a meal with your training group, friends, host country nationals, students, colleagues and others at your global house party.
For the Global House Party celebration, what will you bring to the table?
Please post your answer as a comment below!
Birthday cake, Thai coffee, and Tai dessert, khao niaw will be served.
Rice and Sri Lankan curry (coconut and veggie).
For the Peace Corps party in Cali, I plan to serve Colombian empanadas with aji, yuca (cassava) sticks, and lulu juice, hope I can locate as many ex-volunteers as possible.
Nepali dal bhat tarkari (lentil soup, rice, and curried vegetables)
At the village sponsored global party in Belize we will have a national favorite of barbecue chicken with rice and beans (rice and beans for vegetarians),local vegetable salad, tropical fruits, and liquados (tropical fruit drinks). If we catch fish we will also have Belizean fish soup as an appetizer. For desert we will have a locally made delicacy. Food will be prepared by several families in the village.
A group of nine of us will have supper together at my home, each bringing a dish from his or her site. I will probably make dolma, a main dish of Armenia. I’ve ordered the special teas, and will give each volunteer a box to take home, as a remembrance.
We’ll have peanut butter soup and rice.
I’ll have the dish my village neighbours would make for me on my birthday: sweet potatoes mixed with peanut butter. If I’m really feeling ambitious, I might try to pound the PB myself! Maize or millet ugauli (porridge), if I can find it, guacamole, and greens with relish. Hopefully some of the invitees will bring a favourite host country dish too.
To drink, I think I might have to serve orange Fanta and Kool-Aid (next to more palpable Swiss and French wine, of course).
And of course, a big birthday cake for dessert!
*I hope to serve traditional Kenyan foods such as sukamawiki [Georgian Kales stir fried with onions and spices and fat]
*Possibly goat if I can find it..roasted over charcoal and served with salt pepper [hot pilipili]
*Kenyan beer which I think is at Andersons
*And of course Ugali.. corn maize mush
*Maybe Irio which is meat and peas,kale,onions, spices, all cut up and mixed with smashed potaoes and or plantum bananas I will also show my slides and photos of 1985-87..
Kuon ga alot, nyoyo, rech motedi, chapo
I’ve decided to serve some of the foods that were comfort foods to me in the Dominican Republic: tostones, arroz y habichuelas, concon, pollo, and we’ll share stories and memories of living in different cultures. Invitees include many people who have lived in other cultures.
Borshch Ukrainsky and Vareneyky,Agurkai su Rukcscia Grietne will be the Main Ukrainian Course. Hot Apple Cider will be the Main Drink.
I’ll be serving varenyky and cabbage rolls – two delicious Ukrainian dishes!
I am hosting an International pot luck on March 12th. We will be holding it at a local church and it should be interesting to see what types of dishes we get. I will update this with more details after the event.
We are just sending out the evite this week but hope to have a great group of local volunteers. We are hosting a potluck in our home, and as a RPCV from Thailand, I will be preparing pork laab, chicken tom ka and sticky rice.
Kokonda–raw fish “cooked” in lemon juice and eaten with coconut milk, onion and tomatoes.
The Ajijic, Mexico Branch of Returned Volunteers (which includes those having served in Vista Americor, CUSO, etc.) will be having an Indian Dinner at the Secret Garden Restaurant on Calle Hidalgo, just off the plaza . At present we have about 35 people signed up to attend on Tuesday, March 1 at 5 p.m. Reservations are required.
I will be serving typical Costa Rican food: rice and beans, salad, fruit smoothies, and for dessert mangos and papayas.
We will be doing active outreach to encourage members of Friends of Morocco in the Washington, DC area to attend our gathering but people are welcome to attend other local House Parties and other RPCVs are welcome to attend this event. We have created a web page “What to bring to a Moroccan pot luck picnic” to provide ideas. It is at http://friendsofmorocco.org/Food/potluck.htm
The Inland Northwest Peace Corps Association (INPCA) will be opening its fourth folk art exhibit, focusing on the Asia Pacific region of the world. We will be serving snacks and party food typical of that region of the world along with a large birthday cake. All are welcome to share with us. Our event is Friday, March 4!
The RPCVs of Wisconsin-Madison are serving two teas: Peace and Harmony teas from SerendipiTea.org, specially blended for the 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps.
Our event will be on Saturday, March 5, instead of March 1, because we can reach out to the entire community. On Saturday, the 30th annual International Festival is being held at the Overture Center in Madison — a free community event of music, dance, and cultural exchange. http://www.overturecenter.com/community/international-fest.
Due to our long-time participation in this event, our group has been offered a special location with a serving area in the Overture Center. We are collaborating with the UW-Madison Peace Corps Campus Recruiter to have short presentations on Peace Corps life in various countries. Tea or coffee (coffee offered by the Fair Trade Coffeehouse) will be available for purchase, to encourage people to linger over further conversation.
I’ll be inviting 15 colleagues, neighbors and friends to the party who will introduce some of their own personal favorites from their Romanian and Hungarian kitchens. As we are in the business of exchanging culture here in the PC, I will be bringing my own original recipe Pimento Mac n’ Cheese with Bacon, lots of southern biscuits to eat with honey, a great big bowl of peach cobbler, a heaping pot of banana pudding, and some sweet tea to wash it all down, Charleston style. It’ll be a tasty mix of cuisine heaven.
Peter Laugharn (RPCV Morocco ’82-’84) will be hosting a party in Santa Cruz, CA for all RPCVs in our region. The food will be Northern African themed- mint tea, lamb kebabs, tabouleh, chicken and couscous, tangines, etc. We are even looking for some Moroccan wine!
Kenyan beef samosas for us, we hope other RPCVs from Thailand and Philippines will attend and bring dishes form those countries.
Venezuelan caraotas (habichuelas negras in other parts of the Americas) and empanadas.
we’ll be having Shopska Salad from Bulgaria.
We’ll have Peace Coffee (grown in Guatemala but packaged in Minneapolis), dates, peanuts, popcorn. I should serve Heineken bee too since they ran the Gala beer factory in Chad.
Our office will be bringing foods from around the world from Panama, Kenya, Romania, Mauritania, Mali, Paraguay, Guatemala, El Salvador, DRC, Gabon, etc. I am making Senegalese mafe ak cheeb.
A friend from Ukraine 25 is coming from Michigan to help, and she and I will make blini. A local RPCV will no doubt bring a Honduran dish. There are other wonderful cooks in our RPCV neighborhood.
We are having a potluck on 5 March. Everyone is to bring a dish from service country. I’m bring baklava from Turkey. Should be lots of good eats!
I will be serving tiny cups of Turkish coffee and freshly baked byrek (spinach pastry)!
I have changed my menu…as yet I do not know if anyone is coming so i am going to the people in the community……but i will be addressing two functions in Ottawa….One on the 28th Ottawa KIWANIS CLUB. i will tell about the birthday of PC and share slides adn stories and casset tapes of my time in KENYA. I might serve them Chai also.[Terrible good and sweet spiced Kenyan tea.] On the 1st I will bgive a brief Birthday Toast to PC at the Ottawa Chamber of COmmerce monthly Luncheon.BRUCE
I’ll be hosting a potluck and am requesting a typical dish from your host country, if possible. I’m serving Jerk Chicken and Rice and Peas (red beans), Sunday dinner favorites in Jamaican villages.
TODAY FEB> 28th..I did a program with the Ottawa Kiwamis Club [ about 30 members present for lunch]I spent almost 45 mins. showing slides and telling them about my 1985-87 PC service in Kenya. I also talked about my work with FOK [Friends of Kenya] from 1988 til 20002. I played casset tapes and also had a table of show and tell and served Kenyan Mt. Tea. I let each individual add their own spicy sugar mixture and milk to taste. The local newspaper was there to cover the event… THE VOICE. Article to appear on TUESDAY. I have cancelled my gathering for returned PC tomorrow and will talk to the Ottawa CHamber of COmmerce instead.
Three of us are hosting a potluck at a local foods cooperative in Wooster, Ohio. I will make a birthday cake using locally grown ingredients (apples, local whole wheat flour, free range eggs and butter).
After an organized display for several hours at Centenary College in Hackettstown a discussion will take place with students in “Essentials of Global Politics” and “Global Humanitarian Organizations” classes today. People are then gathering at my Global House Party later in the day. RPCVs are bringing food from the country they served in. Potato leaf plasas from Sierra Leone and groundnut soup from Ghana are examples. RPCVs are also bringing photographs to share and neighbors are coming to learn something about the countries the volunteers served in.
We had a country of service potluck, and although up to now (35 years in Peoria) I had only known a dozen RPCVs, we ended up finding 28 in the area, and 18 were at our house party. It was awesome, and the stories were so great. We’re going to start up a local RPCV group as a result. Food from the following countries was served:
India
Panama
Ecuador
Bolivia
Micronesia
Nevis
Turkey
Ghana
Burkina Faso
Turkmenistan
Guatemala
Paraguay
Nicaragua
Costa Rica