3,300 Dumplings

Tonight was the TAS (Taiwanese-American Society) Dumpling Night, one of our signature events that we hold every semester or so. Just for $5, you can have all-you-can-eat dumplings and all-you-can-drink bubble tea (well, until we run out of bubble tea, which actually does run out very quickly during our events).


As Dumpling Night is one of our main events, we had to ahead of time prepare a lot of dumplings. By a lot, we mean over 3000.


Last year we made around 3,100. This year, after we finished prep, our final estimate was around 3,300. Our dumplings are all hand-made, down to the filling (though we bought the wrappers because hand-making the wrappers would really take far too long).


The event turnout was amazing. This afternoon before the event, we had about 260 people confirmed as "attending" on our Facebook event listing. I don't have the final count of how many people actually came as of yet, but it was definitely a lot, and we were rushing (and struggling) to keep up a steady supply of cooked dumplings coming from kitchen.


Actually, we used two kitchens to cook the dumplings, that of the Asian-American Cultural Center (where the event was held) and La Casa, the Latin-American cultural house.

The event decor also featured for the first time the TAS Pumpkin. One of our board members brought a pumpkin that she brought back from a farm tour. After we finished with our prepping this afternoon, we decided to carve "TAS" on the pumpkin. We didn't put a candle in it though, but it would probably have been really neat to have it glowing out on the porch as people came in (though Halloween is more than a month away).

In any case, though preparation (and cleanup) was long and tiring, Dumpling Night was a very enjoyable experience. Even better, dumplings are one of my favorite foods, and by now I've probably gotten pretty good at making them too.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Through the Fog

Image
It takes about forty-five minutes to walk home from SFSU. I took the M-line bus a few times, which takes much less time, but recently walked more often to save money. The walk isn't really that bad. I've gotten more or less used to walking a few miles, as long as it does not take too much time. It is a good work out after all. Entering the Ingleside Terraces. From campus, I go through the Ingleside Terraces, a relatively affluent neighborhood. The houses here are pretty nice, and are not all packed right next to each other like those in the area around here. It is pretty quiet today. The fog tends to make everything more still than usual. The fog makes everything quiet and still. The sidewalk underneath the trees (and sometimes power lines) are always wet. This is because the trees and power lines are raining. Yes, the trees and power lines are raining. The fog condenses on the leaves and wires until enough droplets collect to drip down. The trees are raining. I ...
Read more

City by the Bay

Image
This semester is a bit different from the others. I have taken a semester off and am doing a software development internship at an online advertising start-up in San Francisco. I spent a few weeks towards the end of summer and right before the beginning of my internship looking for a place to live. I scoured Craigslist, visited a few places that were either too expensive or unsatisfactory. During my last tour, I stopped at a Starbucks near Daly City, about to settle for a windowless room carved out of part of a garage, and went through the listings one last time, and found a promising room for rent near Ingleside. Interestingly, the landlords only spoke Chinese, which was not a problem. I visited the place, and was glad to find that the house was clean and neat, and the room was brightly list and priced reasonably. I moved in a few days later. I've been to San Francisco many times throughout my life, but never really thought about living here. Normally accustomed to driving, ...
Read more

Chinatown

Image
Today after work, I stopped by San Francisco's Chinatown. I haven't been here, or any other chinatowns for that matter, for quite a long time. I started walking over along Montgomery from downtown. San Francisco's financial district never ceases to intrigue me. It is really something walking among the skyscrapers and fancy architecture. Passing the office buildings of a couple of banks, I reached California Street. A few blocks further and uphill, I started to see the distinctive Chinese-stylized buildings and the crowded street-level stores. Chinatown has certainly changed from what I remember. I remember the last time I was here, the area seemed to be a lot grittier. It still has the characteristic grittiness, but it seems like many more gift and souvenir shops with exotic looking sculptures and jewelry and nicer restaurants have cropped up. I was trying to find grocery stores. There was a reason why I came here for a grocery store rather than just go to one that ...
Read more