Hawaiian Haystacks and Crud

No...don't worry.  The Hawaiian Haystacks were a big hit.  After dinner, about 15 gathered around the pool table and played a lively game of Crud.  Stan was right in there with the rest of them.  You don't use pool cues...but you use your hands to aim one ball to hit another...and the turns go very fast.  If you miss, you get one letter from the word Crud next to your name.  Once you have missed four times, you have spelled CRUD and you are out of the game!

Well....back to the Haystacks.  The beauty of Hawaiian Haystacks in the States is the ease with which you can purchase ready-made ingredients.  I keep finding out that everything takes a little more effort on my part.  But if you could measure the effort against the reward, this was my best effort yet.  Everyone really loved them!

I made a very large pot of my own cream of chicken soup.  I baked a lot of chicken and diced it.  I chopped onions again for the soup...and garlic.  And then I tended that soup for a couple of hours.  I also made a couple of huge pots of rice.  Once again I was dealing with labels I didn't completely understand and got two large packages of what turned out to be basmati rice.  It required rinsing, soaking and then cooking.  It wouldn't have been so bad, except the only strainer I had was 1/2 cup size, and that took a long time to rinse all that rice!

We got to the Center, and cut up pineapple rings from a can (no pineapple tidbits), chopped green onions, celery, green and red and yellow peppers, tomatoes, and almonds (no slivered almonds here).  We got a picture before I put the rice and chicken soup on.

It may not look like much...but here is my day, and a lot of my yesterday (but you can't see the cakes!)Ingredients to put on the haystacks are coconut, tomatoes, green/yellow/red peppers, peas, cheese, green onions, water chestnuts, pineapple, mandarin oranges and soy sauce.

You can see the little bottle where they "donate" 15 kroner for dinner...about $3.  

We had close to 40 YSAs there tonight but about 30 ate.  We had just barely enough!  I was so grateful as I saw the huge pot of chicken soup disappear, that everyone got through the line and some came back for seconds before it totally gave out.

I am getting to know more of these young people and it is delightful just to visit with them.  They all speak Danish and some have more of an accent in English than others.  I love the Danish accent.  The way they speak English is utterly charming, although  many have no accent at all....and some speak British English perfectly.  It all depends on where they learned English.  There is a special wit and humor that many have which I so enjoy.  And most of them are courteous and kind in their speech, using gentle tones.  

But the Crud games get loud and boisterous and they have a great time with it.  SK is just hoping he can get good enough to win!

I'm off to bed!  Tomorrow I will bake a couple of batches of cookies for the after-the-temple -session get together.  Whew!  This mission might make a cook out of me yet.