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Cook of the Week: Give the lady a theme, and she'll give you a party

When it comes to making dinner for her and husband, Mark, Leann Runyanwood says she loves to cook from scratch but is not necessarily creative.

But if an idea comes to her or a friend suggests a theme, this Elgin cook loves to plan a party and makes sure it's memorable.

“It's a lot of fun. I say that about all my parties. If I didn't have fun doing it, I wouldn't do it,” she said.

Her love of parties, she said, developed from the years she assisted her mom, Helen, with her catering business. While she didn't help her mom in the kitchen, she remembers being welcomed into the home parties and meeting so many people from all walks of life.

Now, cooking and hosting theme parties is her passion, a way to be creative while embracing the challenge of bringing a theme to life. Once an idea is set, it can sometimes take a couple years to research and develop the menu and activities for a particular party.

“Anytime someone mentions an idea and I can think of a food that can fit it, that excites me,” she said.

Leann admits her parties sometimes allow her to display her twisted sense of humor. To recognize the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking in 2012, she made a bowl of blue punch featuring small icebergs and shark fins floating within. Guests were assigned the name of a person who was on the Titanic and they were served dishes from the Titanic menu, including chicken curry, lime Jell-O, éclairs and turnip purée.

“I made pureed turnip because that was on the fancy menu for the Titanic. Nobody ate it,” she said with a laugh. “I had an entire bowl of this pureed mashed turnip. That may have been what fancy people ate on the Titanic but in my life, no thank you.”

Her parties have incorporated various themes including a St. Valentine's Day Massacre Halloween party featuring an Italian feast complete with lasagna and chocolate-shaped bullets stuffed inside a heart-shaped cake. At a Hawaiian luau, guests were surrounded by tropical flowers and wore leis as they ate Kahlua pork and Huli Huli chicken. To celebrate one New Year's Eve, she planned a big breakfast including ham and ebleskiver or Norwegian pancakes.

Another recent party was a Pi party when the rare date, March 14, 2015 came on the calendar. She said different elements of the party matched up to nine points behind the decimal, 3.141592653.

“We had two parties because that was one of the numbers. We had nine types of pie. We started the second party at 6 p.m. We had five types of pizza and three types of quiche because those are all numbers in pi,” she said. “It was a tremendous amount of fun.”

Mark often serves as her partner in crime. Leann recalls he made a cookie cutter shaped like the mathematical Pi symbol so they could make Pi cookies. Most often, he helps set up and clean up and does it without complaining.

Compared to those elaborate parties, Leann said dinners are ordinary, drawing inspiration from those catering days when her mom made a variety of ethnic cuisines. Leann said some of her favorite dishes are her lasagna, sweet and sour pork and chicken curry. But she adds most often dinner is figuring out what's in the house and often freezing portions so they can have leftovers.

“I find out what's on sale at the store. What freezes well. I cook from scratch but it's figuring out what do I have on hand,” she said. “Stew beef is on sale so I think I'll make beef chili this week. It's that simple.”

She was planning to rest during 2016, but once she realized there's a presidential election in November, the wheels started turning. Highlight past presidents with peanuts and jelly beans? Find an elephant soup recipe to represent the Republicans and perhaps food with a spicy kick for the Democrats? She's already plotting how to add a string of lights to a gelatin mold, a nod to former President George H.W. Bush's “thousand points of light.”

“So much for taking a year off,” Leann said. “ I'm totally thinking about it.”

Mom's Chicken Curry

Helen's Glazed Bacon

  Golden raisins, peanuts and shredded coconut are among the garnishes Leann Runyanwood recommends for her chicken curry. Laura Stoecker/lstoecker@dailyherald.com
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