2008 New Year Clan Reunion

My father's extended family (basically the family of two brothers,my father being the younger brother ) has had a New Year's reunion for almost sixty years now. It used to be held in our Tito Nanding's home and all of us elder cousins have fond memories of these reunions mainly because of the impromptu baseball games we played in the yard(a lot of us were baseball crazy) and the loud and raucous conversations about anything under the sun.
That house is now gone and we have been holding the reunion at home for several years now. This year we held the reunion on January 6 because one of my brothers (Jaime) who lives in Pittsburgh was here for a visit with his family but was spending New Year in Boracay with his wife's (Evelyn) family coming back only on the 5th and leaving on the 7th. So we decided to move the reunion to the 6th.
We are a large family. My uncle had eight children, six sons and two daughters. My father had nine children, six sons and three daughters. Out of this second generation there are forty one grandchildren. And there are nine great grandchildren already.
For this reunion our head count was sixty four hungry people.
Although traditionally it has been a potluck setting I decided to set the menu and asked Mitay and Tess (Mel's wife) to prepare something. Eyo(Pepot's #2 son) texted about what to bring for the lunch and I asked him to bring dessert.
The menu we put together was inspired by the innovative Filipino dishes you get at Sentro 1771.It included the following:

• Appetizer Tokwa't/Bangus Bellies
• Soup Corned Beef in Tamarind Soup
• Salad Mitay's Green Mango Salad
• Entrees Anna's Roast Chicken
  Pork Barbecue from Dannylicious w/Reyes BBQ sauce
  (Dannylicious is a BBQ place in the Proj 4 that is a local
  favorite)
  Tess's Gourmet Tuyo
  our version of Rated GG (galungong in garlic oil)
• Rice with choices of adobo sauce,tuyo sprinkle or ground
  chicharon
  

• Desserts Mila's Chocolate Cake to die for
  Desserts from Conti's
  Fruits in Ice Cream
  Of course we also had Majestic Ham, Queso de Bola Marca Pato and the usual fruits Pinoys put on the New Year table. To top this Trina brought real chicharon laman from Cagayan de Oro that was so treacherous but heavenly.We consumed ten packs of the chicharon
  
  

To explain to Dulce the cook how to prepare the Corned Beef in Tamarind Soup and the Rated GG I had to show her the web pages from the Chateau 1771 web site. But she got it because we had a meal wipe out. The buffet table looked like a typhoon passed through it after the meal.
I was so happy that all enjoyed the menu we put together. Happy New Year to All.