Carol McLane
Michigan Trails GS
Portland Troop #300
USA
I did a mystery dinner once for my troop and their Parents. My troop
was only 5 girls so we had about 9 people there. I and my son did all
the serving without problem. If you had a LARGER group you might want
to recruite help. It was really fun. I prepared the menu first and
then I scoured the junior hand book to try to figure out badges or
activities that "fit" the menu item. For instance for Relishes - I used
Exploring Healthy Eating and World Neighbors. The badges mention Olives
and Pickles (at least they did when we did this dinner. I don't know
about the new badge book). For the Lemonade, the badge was Business
Wise because the badge showed a girl running a lemonade stand. Do you
get the idea?
There was a menu pick for each part of the meal, salad, main course,
vegatable, potato, desert as well as fork, spoon, knife and beverage.
When the people arrived they were given a Junior Badge book and the
Mystery Dinner Menu that listed all the badges. They had to look up
each badge and try to figure out what it represented. Then they had to
rank the badges in order that they wanted to have the dinner served.
To serve the dinner, each person received the first thing that they
picked. One person may receive their salad first while another may
receive their potato first. After everyone had their first "course"
then we proceeded to Course two. and the meal continued in that fashon
After all the courses were served, I gave them real plates and put the
dishes on the table so that they could have seconds of anything.
Everyone had a great time and it was the hit of the year. At the end I
also gave everyone a Key to the menu and what each badge meant. Remember
that this several years ago and the badges may have changed.
Relishes - Exploring Healthy Eating and World Neighbors Potato - Print Graphics Utensils - Outdoor cook Salad - World of Well-being Dabbler Lemonade - Business Wise Vegetable - Outdoor fun in the City Meat - Food, farbers & Farming Cake - Plants & Animals As much as possible, have the menu pre-served. For instance, the salad
was already in the bowls, relishes were on small plates, lemonade was
poured and cake was cut and on desert plates. That way the only things
that needed to be dished up was the hot things. I think I did Ham,
augrautin potatoes and green beans.
I had done this at my church where we had about 15 different items to
choose from. That included the utensils seperatly and included a
napkin, toothpicks and several other "courses".
This was great fun and would be fun to do it again
Hope you have a great time!
Badges mention Olives and pickles
Badge activity is to use a potato to create a print block
Part of the chart includes "equipment needed" (It would be more fun to
divide the knife/fork/spoon up :-}
Activity has you getting involved in a community garden plot or a
rooftop garden
The patch shows a girl running a lemonade stand
Activity 9 refers to being involved in a garden
Several activities mention meat, raising it or the source of our meat
Activity 5 refers to growing a plant from a pineapple head. The cake
was a pineapple upside down cake
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