The Food

Something I loved about our family reunion, is how several people contributed their time and talents.  My aunt Kelly, who has experience providing food for large groups, organized meals by contacting everyone in advance.  She asked that each family be in charge of one or two meals.  Whoever was in charge would be responsible to plan, prepare, and clean up afterwards, but it was cool how others often pitched in to lighten the load.  I remember a couple of aunts doing way more than their fair share of dishes, counter cleaning, and sweeping!

The plan was to have breakfast and dinners together and each family be responsible for their own lunches.  This way, if a family was out doing their own thing on a particular day, they could eat lunch out or whatever worked best for them.  We set breakfast for 9 a.m. and dinner for 6 p.m.  Greg and I volunteered to cook one dinner.  It went well, except for we ran out of two side dishes faster than we expected!  I'm not used to cooking for a crowd that large!  It was also challenging finding our way around a foreign kitchen, and the kitchen was pretty small considering the number of people eating there.  But we survived it!  Lol!  It was nice not having to worry about most of our meals and saved us lots of money not eating out.  In fact, I don't think we ate a single meal out during the reunion portion of our trip.  All our breakfasts and dinners were homemade.  Kylen sure got spoiled on the breakfasts!  Egg casseroles, bacon, pancakes.  At home, he's used to cold cereal!

My cousin's wife, Myrna, is a perfect example of contributing her talent in a meaningful and unique way.  Most of our group went deep sea fishing for five hours and brought back lots of fresh fish.  While they were gone, we were chatting about how the fish would need to be cooked.  She volunteered to prepare an authentic Hispanic meal with fish tacos.  Most of the moms helped her and got a cooking lesson to boot!  She made almost everything from scratch, including a special sauce, rice, and something similar to pico de gallo.  She even made a delicious drink I'd never heard of called horchata.  It was delicious!!