Newcomers’ Club fundraises with cookbook, chance to win vacation

Aiken Newcomers’ Club ways and means committee chair Bobbie Kastet and President Linda Engelman show off the club’s first cookbook, “The Culinary Road to Aiken.” Staff photo by Suzanne Stone.

The Aiken Newcomers’ Club has found some spicy ways to raise money for its annual donations to local charities and service agencies.

The club’s members are selling tickets for a drawing to be held at its March 13 luncheon at Newberry Hall. Prizes include an all-inclusive Mexican Bonanza week-long vacation package for two, gift baskets donated by club member Mary Shannon and gifts donated by such local businesses as Maria’s Mexican Restaurant, Serenity Spa & Lash Lounge, the Fresh Market and more. Ticket holders do not need to be present at the luncheon to win.

“All of the proceeds from our fundraisers go to local charities and service agencies. We give out donations twice a year – at Christmas and at the end of our club’s fiscal year,” said club president Linda Engelman.

The grand prize vacation package features accommodations at the Grand Occidental Xcaret resort hotel on the Riviera Maya in Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico, round-trip airfare from Atlanta to Cancun and limo service from Augusta to the Atlanta Airport provided by EZ Ride of Augusta. The vacation package is good for one year after the drawing, but the week of Christmas is excluded, according to Engelman.

Tickets for chances for prizes in the drawing are $10 each or three for $25. For ticket information, contact Aiken Newcomers’ Club ways and means committee chair Bobbie Kastet at 641-8208.

The ways and means committee also organized an ongoing fundraiser for the Newcomers’ Club: the sale of the club’s first member-generated cookbook, “The Culinary Road to Aiken.” The cookbook boasts some 350 recipes from club members and local restaurants, markets, nutritionists and doctors and arrived from the printer this week. Club members are delivering copies to local stores, and it will be widely available by the end of next week, according to Kastet.

“The idea of the cookbook is everybody who belongs to our club came to Aiken from somewhere else, and we’ve all brought our recipes with us from where we came here from. We have recipes from all over the world. It’s unique; it’s not just Southern cooking,” Kastet said.

“This is the first cookbook we’ve done that anyone in the club can remember,” said Engelman. “The Aiken Newcomers’ Club dates back to the 1970s. The idea was very well received when Bobbie asked the membership for recipes. I was like, ‘Are we going to get 350 recipes?’ But they were very receptive to the idea of contributing to the cookbook.”

The cookbook includes recipes for tzimmis, Texas hash, Vleeskroketten, gravlox, Norwegian pancakes, cioppino, South African garlic chicken, Downeast Maine pumpkin bread, ensalada valenciana and more delicacies beloved by club members.

“The Culinary Road to Aiken” will be available at Aiken Office Supply, Plum Pudding, the Curiosity Shop, Aiken Regional Medical Centers, Magnolia Natural Market & Cafe, High Country Oil, the Aiken Visitors Center & Train Museum and the Aiken County Historical Museum. The three-ring binder book is priced at $20.

“It’s a limited edition,” said Kastet. “Once they’re gone, they’re gone.”

Suzanne Stone is a general assignment reporter at the Aiken Standard. Contact Suzanne Stone at sstone@aikenstandard.com, or follow on Twitter at #SuzanneRStone and on Facebook at Suzanne Stone | Aiken Standard.