Ethnic food goes fast at church

Empty crock pots and other dishes were the only items that remained on most tables, the food long gone.

“This was 15 pounds of beef,” said Vera Heitink, co-chair of the United Presbyterian Church’s annual Ethnic Food Fair, pointing to an empty crock pot.

People lined up at the door of the church Saturday, waiting to taste home-cooked ethnic dishes from around the world.

“For the first hour, it was non-stop,” said Aline Haddad, a cook for the event. “They’ve learned to come quickly and fast. If they come late, all of the food is gone.”

Aline Haddad, from Lebanon, said she makes the Middle Eastern dishes for the event with a friend from Jordan. Every year she said they always think they need to cook more food.

Almost twice as many people came in the first hour, said Rachel Loop, one of the co-chairs of the event, and two-thirds more tickets were sold than last year.

“I think the weather was a lot of it,” she said. “And there weren’t a lot of other things going on. But it’s the food that makes it successful.”

Preparing the dishes for the event begins on the day before the event each year.

“People do not know how much work is done making the dishes,” Heitink said. “I was sitting for two hours just peeling garlic.”

Preparation is more of a social occasion, Loop said. While it is work, she said, it is also fun.

One main problem the organizers of the event have is estimating how much of each dish to make, Loop said.

“We run out of some foods,” she said. “That’s always something we try to figure out. Last year we had too much Korean food; this year we ran out.”

One of the Church’s appealing qualities, Loop said, is the multicultural composition. The food fair demonstrates their ethnicity and celebrates their diversity, she said.

Freshman Aida Haddad, a member of the church, said the food fair is a good way to show people the church.

“Plus, my parents like to see a lot of kids around,” Aida Haddad said.

Although many people who attend the event are members of the church, Loop said a lot of people who attend are neighbors from the area that walk there every year.

“They don’t come to the church, but they always come to the festival,” she said. “I have two longtime friends that I’ve been friends with for 20 or 25 years that I can always be sure to see once a year, because they always come to this event.”