I just ordered take out from Jen’s Thai Food, a new local caterer in town. And it was fantastic! Even my husband, who is not a big fan of spicy food, thoroughly enjoyed Jen’s Pad Thai, fried rice and fresh rolls as did our toddler.

This is what I really love about Tok – there are these “hidden” and unexpected things that happen here. A concert-quality Steinway. An eclectic and very talented writers group. A book club focused on books about outdoors, nature, wildlife. Interesting and kind people. These nuggets that you really have to pay attention to find.

The business is a little more than a week old, and the response has been tremendous. What a neat enterprise in our own back yard!

If you’d like to order some delicious, freshly-prepared Thai food, call up Jen’s at 883-3362.

Before we left for a 2-week stay in Anchorage, we had our first dinner party. Before our daughter was born, we used to have people over to our house for dinner fairly often. Then we became parents of a newborn, and “socialize” was not part of our vocabulary for a while.

I was excited to plan an easy dinner of moose meat tacos with all the fixings and asked that people bring things. My husband put an invitation into everyone’s mailbox at his office, and I handed out a few invites to people I’d only recently met. Someone joked (at least I think they were joking) that we should just put up a couple of fliers on the local bulletin boards and invite everyone.

At one point in the planning process, my husband asked to see my guestlist.

“Some of these people probably don’t know each other,” he said. “They most likely don’t even socialize with one another.”

That was the point, I told him.

We had a lot of people show up for our first shindig, and I paid the 13-year-old son of one of my husband’s co-workers to hang out with the under 5 crowd (all girls). He was terrific with them.

During the party, we recounted the comment my husband made about the “diverse” guest list.

“I call it ‘Strategic Party Hosting,’” I said, and everyone laughed. People commented to us on several separate occasions that evening that they really enjoyed meeting new people in Tok.

Who knew that I’d be bringing people in a small community together to meet one another for the first time? Chalk that up to my social networking background, I guess.

I look forward to our next dinner party and to really connecting with our neighbors as well as connecting them with each other.