Fondue Farewell

Hal writes:

Typically, the housing department gives me money to spend to feed my RAs dinner on the last day of finals and breakfast the next morning since there is no meal service on campus. The amount of money is good for a little meal, but my RAs wanted to go out with more of a feast. In additional to the departmental funds, the RAs saved up their lockout money to use for a Fondue Party for their last dinner on campus in my apartment. (When a student gets locked out of their room, they get let back in the first time for free, and then they are charged $3 each time after that. The RAs pick what to spend the money on.)

It took me two hours to prepare all the items, mostly on my own. As my staff showed up for dinner, they helped out where they could. One area was the cheese fondue area. This was made with three different types of cheese, a variety of spices, and a little bit of white wine to thin out the mixture. To my RAs amusement, it was a little thick to begin with, so I kept adding more white wine once the mixture was in the crock pot. This was served with cut up loaves of french bread and pretzels.



The "main course" was the meat fondue area. I had two pots (because of the number of people I had, you don't want more than six per pot) to cook the meat. I had defrosted and cut up a few chicken breasts and had cut up three different types of steak. You can see around the edge of the table the different types of sauces for dipping. As an experiment, we deep fried some bratwurst as well. (Only in Wisconsin...) This was the first fondue experience for many of my RAs.

And last, but certainly not least, the chocolate fountain. I had borrowed the machine from another RD and mixed my own chocolate for the fountain. There were marshmallows, angel food cake, fresh baked brownies, pretzels, bananas, apples, raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries to dip in the chocolate swirl.

Now that I have confidence in myself to put something like this on again, just let me know if you would like me to come and help you host a fondue party. (Limited to 12 people, I need 2.5 hours of prep time...)