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The Asian Banquet that was held last month was a huge success. It was really great to see so many people enjoying themselves and with the guests having such a great time, the atmosphere flowed on to all the volunteers and we went home tired but thinking what a night! and there is now even talk about another one. So watch out for that. We had great music from Jan and Kieth and their group called Kalangadoo (I hope I have spelt that right) plus Edna, with her guitar, sang solos. So we had two different styles of music and they complemented one another well. Myself and a very good friend Maurice Fong cooked the food but we could not have done it without all the wonderful helpers and I would like to thank all my friends who are not members of the Twin Creeks Group who put their hands up to cut up vegetables at Tafe on the Friday afternoon but especially Anne who had the great job of cutting up the onions. I hope we are still friends, as I have not heard from you lately - only joking. We must also thank Tafe for the use of your kitchen for those three hours and hope that you are now enjoying being at Twin Creeks reserve on your revegetation programme. This is one of many reasons the Friends of the Porongurup Range are buying Twin Creeks, so that students have somewhere to go to learn and take part. If schools of the area would like to participate in any aspect of Twin Creeks they only need to get in touch with the Friends. You can see by the menu the food was varied, with dishes from several countries. In honour of Maurice we kept to the Chinese tradition by serving the sweet and sour pork first. The news that came back to the kitchen was that BBQ pork was great, the baked fish and satay chicken were not to be missed, the green curry had a bite to it with bottles of water in demand at the bar and by the eighth dish most of our guests had the problem that they had far too much food to enjoy and for me that was a great relief because in the past I had never cooked for more than fourteen people and just knowing how much food would be needed for 100 people was a concern but we had enough left over that we could have fed a further 30 people and so many of the helpers went home with their dinners for the next few days. For all the people who have asked me for the recipe for the baked fish, I will put it on our website soon, so keep looking and all will be revealed. I cannot finish my news letter on the banquet without saying thanks to Gayle for her wonderful work behind the bar and Theo who if he ever gets fed up with farming was a natural barman (are you sure you have not done it before?) - but I have just one small complaint, singing lessons are needed. The wait people were on top of things, as you can see by the photograph of Lesley rushing to the tables with two further plates of food. The meal started on time with every table being served almost straight away and the dishes just kept coming, although we found it hard in the kitchen to keep up with the fried rice demand and a big thank you to Charlie for his help with the fish dish that had a bit of a struggle to get to the table with over 10 kg of fish in one oven. Lastly there must be a big thank you to all those businesses and people out there that donated some great gifts and Adriana who had the job of phoning around for them and explaining to the donors what Twin Creeks was all about and because of their kind donations we were able to present a big door prize and had several raffles on the night. Ann [Burchell], I would just never have made it without all your many hours of help in arranging this and that. We raised some $3,000 for Twin Creeks; Twin Creeks has had some good publicity, a great deal of fun was had and I turned my hobby of cooking into a banquet. We must have done something right because we have been asked since if we could do a couple of catering jobs. Once again thanks to all David Smith
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