Chastain Dinner

Once a year, my ward puts on an event called the Chastain Dinner.  The name came from a family that used to live in the ward in some place called Chastain that did the same sort of thing, so we named it after it's birthplace.

What is a Chastain Dinner?  It's an adults-only dinner where all of the attendees are put into groups ahead of time so that they can plan their theme.  Once a theme is decided upon, we're encouraged to decorate our tables, dress up in costumes, even plan our table's dinner menu according to the theme.  My table decided on the Lego Movie as our theme and we did build-your-own tacos (both in reference to "Taco Tuesday" mentioned in the movie and to go along with Legos being a building toy).  I made the taco meat (both chicken and beef), as well as fresh guacamole and pico de gallo.  (Quick side note: I've never made pico de gallo before and I wasn't sure how much to make for eight people.  I diced up 16 tomatoes and then added enough onion, garlic, cilantro, jalapeno, lime juice, and salt until it tasted right.  It tasted great -- I got lots of compliments -- but I made nearly a gallon's worth of salsa.  Everyone took leftovers with them, so I guess it worked out.)  We also had cheese and crackers cut to look like Legos and brownies with colored icing and M&Ms on top that also looked like Legos.

And then there were the costumes.  We had an Emmet, a Wyldstyle, a Vitruvius, a Batman, a Good Cop/Bad Cop, a Benny the Astronaut, an Abraham Lincoln (me), even a Unikitty.  I'm working on getting some pictures of our table, but there was a lot of care taken in making everything look right.

Other table themes included a Hawaiian luau, a Peruvian Barbecue, March Madness, and being stuck at the airport.  After we'd had a chance to eat and socialize, we announced our table's theme to the rest of the group and got a chance to vote on which table we liked best.  While we were allowed to vote for our own table (a change from last year), I decided that it would be more fair if I kept the candidates to the other tables.  Even so, the Lego Movie table won by a landslide.

The Chastain Dinner is one of those things that's kind of hard to explain unless you've been there already, but it's a lot of fun and I'm glad that I participated again this year.