How do you feed your wanderlust between trips? My favorite way is quite literal: With food.
Last week, I was invited to a travel-themed potluck at my friend Emily’s house — she called it her “Round-The-World” dinner party. She said she was inspired by our recent SweetsCrawl (blush)! I’ve been to lots of other potluck dinners, but this one was so cleverly and carefully organized it’s worth sharing.
First, Emily selected a group of friends who all love to travel and all appreciate good food — no picky eaters here! After the RSVPs came in, she mapped courses from different regions of the world (e.g., appetizer from Africa, salad from Europe) and drew names to assign them to different guests. As one of the more creative uses of Pinterest, she posted all our assignments to a mapped Pinterest board along with fun travel photos she gleaned from our social media accounts. (Click here to see the board!)
The meal was presented in courses and at their turn, each guest was asked to talk about their recipe and what inspired them. Some dishes were inspired by our own travels. I brought iburigakko, an appetizer I learned about on my recent trip to Northern Japan. Several others were inspired by family heritage, like a guest who got dessert from Spain and brought her own family recipe for flan (the best I’ve ever eaten)! Others were just delicious and beautiful creations, like the African curry soup and bean dip pictured above.
Though the food was spectacular, probably my favorite part was a surprise. In between each course, we played team geography trivia! Emily’s geo-buff father put together several handouts and a powerpoint presentation to reveal the answers. The questions were challenging and we all had fun working through them in our randomly assigned teams. Members of the winning team (mine!) were awarded bottles of “dictator-themed” soda pops (Joseph Stalin’s “Stalin-ade”, Fidel Castro’s “Havana Banana”, and Muammar Gaddafi’s “Cream My People”).
One sign of a successful event is when no one takes any photos. Even me, ever the photographer, was too busy stuffing my face, brainstorming geotrivia answers, and chatting up new friends. The picture above is the only one I took.
It was a really fun night full of travel inspiration and great food — a clever idea for traveling foodies and their friends.
Next time the party’s at my house … who’s in?
Here is a link to the soda prizes – you kind of have to see it to believe it
http://www.rocketfizz.com/products/more-soda
Ahhh! How could I forget about Kim Jung Il’s Terrorizing Taste!
I love this idea! I had a friend in Ohio who used to throw these amazing dinner parties, usually Indian food. I never imagined that a regular person could actually make Indian food, but I discovered that she had a good cookbook (Madhur Jaffrey, I think) and was just having fun. I later hosted several international themed dinners but never one like this with food from around the world. What would make it even more fun would be to have people from those places come! I bet some of the community college students learning ESL in your area would love it! 🙂
Thanks, Jenna! Nice, I’ll check out that cookbook author! I’m pretty good with Indian curries, but I’ve never tried anything more complicated. Love the idea of inviting international friends or students over, perhaps to cook the dishes together, though then you would be limited to a pretty small group. You should do a potluck with your students!
I LOVE this idea! I’ve already linked to this post on my personal FB page and have informed friends that my new goal is to host a classy round-the-world themed dinner party just like you did 😀
Glad you like the idea, Manda! And FYI, I didn’t prepare the classy dishes pictured. There’s a reason I didn’t take a picture of my dish — the weird, pickled radish sandwiches with cream cheese oozing out of the side. It wasn’t very photogenic, but tasty 🙂
I don’t think I could eat without taking a photo first of the beautiful food intact. I love foodie parties, I’m part of one where we cook a certain country cuisine and each person brings a unique dish to that particular area – it’s fun let each person talk about the ingredients and cooking of the dish they are presenting.
Haha, I was being a lazy blogger that night 🙂 So you meet regularly with a group of people to do this kind of thing, focusing on one country a time? I love that idea!
Great idea! 🙂 I’ve been super lazy blogger, so not very many photos from me this entire year. I’ve barely kept up with my daily photo project!
PS – I’m in!
Yay! Yes, I’ve missed you and we need to get together soon! But I have been very impressed that you’ve kept up with the daily photo challenge… I made it 6 days 🙂 http://everintransit.tumblr.com/
This is a great idea! I love having people over for dinner but this would make it more interesting and like you are traveling 🙂
It was such a fun party! Kara, I see you live in Palo Alto, we live nearby, we should meet up sometime!
What a cool dinner party and idea!! I love events like these!
Thanks, lady! You should host one down in LA when you get home. I’ll come down!