Question: Guess who's coming to dinner?
Answer: 30,000 of your closest friends!
At the [a href="http://www.y-yeg.jp/imoni/"]Yamagata Imoni Festival[/a] ("Yamagata potato stew festival") last weekend, 100 chefs gathered around a cauldron measuring 6 meters (20 feet) in diameter to prepare potato soup for 30,000 guests. The 18th annual festival organized by the [a href="http://www.yamagata-cci.or.jp/"]Yamagata Chamber of Commerce and Industry[/a] was held on the banks of the Mamigasaki River in Yamagata prefecture.
(http://discoverseattle.net/image/cooking-excavator.jpg)
As the centerpiece of a PR campaign to spur consumption of local agricultural products, the soup was made entirely from local ingredients, including 3 tons of taro potatoes ([em]satoimo[/em]), 1.2 tons of beef, 3,500 blocks of [em]konnyaku[/em] (yam paste), 3,500 leeks, 50 bottles of sake, 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of sugar, 700 liters (185 gallons) of soy sauce, and 6 tons of water. After the stew boiled for 4 hours, 2 backhoes were used to scoop it into smaller cauldrons for easier serving. The soup was reported to have a refreshing soy sauce flavor.[/p] A separate batch of miso-flavored potato soup with pork was prepared in a smaller cauldron measuring 3 meters in diameter.[/p][a href="http://www.pinktentacle.com/2006/09/how-to-prepare-stew-for-30000/"]http://www.pinktentacle.com/2006/09/how-to-prepare-stew-for-30000/[/a]