2015 - April 5, Family Potluck

From ATS Wiki

Revision as of 19:01, 11 May 2015

Event Captains

Clare Zhang, Tricia Shi, Cynthia Lo

Event Overview

Fun, food, and family all in one event! Families gather recipes and submit them to us. We buy the ingredients, and then families spread out and cook the day of the event. Everyone comes together at dinner time to eat, drink, and be merry. After dinner, we have some form of activity each year. This year, it was the Victor's Family Fun Night quiz game, hosted by Norman.

This year we also included a secret ingredient portion. We gave families lychee jelly and star fruit day of and asked they incorporate it into a dish. :P

The timing of potluck has been changing the past couple years. Really, it can be placed whenever convenient with respect to other events. This year it was the weekend after spring break. This weekend should probably be avoided in the future, since families disappear over break and forget to compile recipes. No family submitted their recipe on time - which makes it harder for captains to compile recipes, figure out shopping lists, and sort out supplies in time. As captains, give yourself ample time to figure out your shopping lists - it takes a lot longer than one would think.

Timeline

• Deadline for families to submit recipes: March 31 (not actually met by anyone lol)
• Cookware/supplies gathering: April 3
• Shopping: April 4 - went to Cmart and Hmart in the morning, and Shaw's at night.
• Actual Event: April 5, 5-8PM, New House 6

Attendance

Probably about 40-50 people came by throughout the event. DO NOT SCALE RECIPES TO THIS NUMBER! They should be scaled to feed about the size of a family + a few servings more (that's the idea of a potluck! :P)

Contacting Families

Things you should consider when contacting families about recipes:

• Ask for a family representative. Having one person in charge will make things infinitely easier for you and the family.
• Create a Google Form for submitting recipes. Request that families scale portions themselves. Remember, not everything scales linearly! :P
  • This year, recipes got pretty complicated. In the future it would be really good to ask families to cut out portions of the recipe that are not essential/only needed in small quantities (ex. a pinch of some obscure spice). Most families just copy and paste directly from a website, so ask that they filter the recipe a little.
  • Another thing to consider is having a portion of the form asking "How much flour overall do you need? How much soysauce overall do you need? Sugar, salt, rice, other staples, etc." It becomes a bit of a pain to go through each recipe to figure out how much of an essential is needed for a family overall. This way, you would have one entry in your spreadsheet that tells you how much.
• Ask where families will be cooking. Not everyone can fit in the Next Country Kitchen! This year it was:
  • BFFL - Next Country Kitchen
  • Pirates - Next Country Kitchen
  • Gangstas - McCormick Country Kitchen
  • Bobasaurs - Pi Phi
  • >U - New House
• Ask what cooking supplies families will need! Like pots, bowls, can openers, etc.
  • We just asked through email but having a separate Google Form could also be good.
  • People always forget can openers lol.
• Set up a time day of for family representatives to pick everything up!
  • Bringing a cart highly recommended.

Shopping/Collecting/Organizations

The great C-Mart debacle of 2015 AHH!

Our budget was ~$500 for everything.

We went to Shaw's, C-mart, and H-mart to get everything the day before. If a family has a complicated recipe, ask if the representative would like to come along on the shopping trip to make sure everything is okay. Otherwise, it is a really good idea to let everyone know WHEN the shopping is occurring. Request that family representatives be awake/near their phone in case any questions come up.

We also grabbed all of the cookware from McCormick. At Next House, we sorted each family's items onto different tables and had them pick it up. We also cleared a fridge and gave each family a different shelf corner.

Judging

Judges! This year we asked Amy Ishiguro and Liang Zhou to judges - they come to ATS events but aren't affiliated with a family.

Can't remember all the categories, but they included Voter's Choice, Most Creative, Best Use of Secret Ingredient, Best Presentation, Best Entree, Best Dessert.

We bought assorted snacks as prizes and requested that each family win at least one category.

Set up

Take pictures of wherever you are before you move furniture. It's important to return things to the way they were!

We didn't use tablecloths this year - consider having them for next year..

Each family has a table to place all their food stuffs.

Other Notes

• A lot of people show up for the food but don't help their families cook. A lot of the cooks were just exec members. Think of ways to inspire non-exec to come! This year it was kind of like that story with the chicken and the cake where no one helps but everyone wants to eat. :(
• Protip: have a family outing before Family Potluck, and then remind/poke people to come.
• Lunar New Year Family Potluck?
• We discussed giving families a budget, but I think that asking them to filter out random, expensive ingredients will be okay. Also, different families cook different sizes/numbers of dishes, so it'd be weird to give price caps.
• Families are ALWAYS late. Try to enforce a start time, or reduce the max number of dishes a family can make. Families came at all different times, and people just kind of started eating... we didn't get a formal "Hi everyone, welcome to family potluck! Let's take family pictures with food! :D"