Dinner

With a high-priced awards dinner to be held today, the Philadelphia School District has raised $400,000 for its Children's First Fund - the most successful campaign it has had for the fund to date. The two-year-old fund supports education-reform efforts and helps children in crisis, including covering some burial costs of district children who die while enrolled in public schools. It is a separate nonprofit fund; money donated to it will not go into the general budget or be used to offset the district's projected $73.3 million deficit, said Cecilia Cummings, the district's senior vice president for communications and community relations.

Coming soon to a convenience store near you: scrambled eggs on a stick. Next to which you'll find chili in a cup and macaroni and cheese in a tube. Welcome to the next wave of food technology: automotive eatability. The goal is to make it easier to eat while you drive so you can save a few more valuable units of time in your day. Never mind that if we look at everything our moms did to get dinner on the table, we're about three hours ahead already. It's hard to believe that mom prepared our food using knives, egg-beaters, rolling pins and other tools from the prehistoric era. Then she cooked it for one hour at 350 degrees.

I recently helped read 500 college freshmen placement essays on: Is the traditional family doomed? The leitmotif of the answers, mostly a lament, was that families don't eat dinner together much any more. To know a nation's moral character, Dostoevski said to look at its jails. Social character shows in how we eat, and more and more, we eat alone, at our desks, on the run, or hunched over something microwaved, in front of the television. "How are you doing?" a friend asked me the other day. "Not so hot," I replied.

Capping a day of visiting and speaking with the cadets, guest of honor Robert Ballard attended a military-style dinner in Eisenhower Hall at Valley Forge Military Academy and Junior College on April 1. Ballard, an explorer, author and finder of the sunken ships Titanic and Bismarck, received the Order of Anthony Wayne for Distinguished Public Service from retired Vice Adm. N. Ronald Thunman, superintendent of the academy, while Betsy Thunman...

For some of the people seated at the long, cafeteria-style table, this Friday night dinner was their first and only meal of the day. Many people lingered over dinner and dessert, lowering their forks between bites and carrying on conversations with friends. Some were prolonging their imminent return to the street and the cold. Three years ago, when Christine Campbell first formed Share and Care Suppers, about five people routinely showed up for the weekly meal. Now, closer to 45 gather at the Holy Trinity Church in West Chester every Friday night, and another 45 dinners are distributed to people who are homebound.

Even though the Rev. Deborah McEachran is expecting about 200 people for dinner next Sunday, she doesn't feel the least bit panicked. She is looking forward to it with calm, said the pastor of the Jacksonville Presbyterian Church in Springfield Township and the clergy liaison of the Mount Holly Caring Center. "I can't wait to see the faces of all the people who have helped out with the center over the years," said Mrs. McEachran, who has organized the catered dinner with others in the Mount Holly Clergy Association, which oversees the operation of the Caring Center.

I met Mitzi Perdue, wife of Frank, this spring in the fire tower of the Hyatt Regency in Vancouver, British Columbia, at a gathering of gluttons - otherwise known as a networking breakfast for food folk. We'd both gotten tired of waiting for the elevator and ended up walking down 24 flights of steps together. By the time we reached the convention floor, we had compared treadmills, publishers and husbands; I decided she was ahead on all three. The following afternoon our latest cookbooks sat cheek to jowl at an autographing table, and so did we. My husband Alvin brought us tidbits from the buffet to keep our signing arms supple, which impressed Mitzi, but unnerved me. I've been Alvin's wife for 25 years and I know he's only that considerate when he's getting ready to reveal some really hideous secret.

It was Washington's version of the Oscars: a star-studded state dinner to fete Chinese President Jiang Zemin. In an East Room grandly decorated in gold, with tall candelabras covered with fragrant roses, 232 guests selected for their corporate or political power dined last night in the knowledge that they were on the A-list of A-lists. All state dinners are impressive, but the jockeying to be included in this affair was heightened because of the importance of the country being honored, and the infrequency of visits from its leaders.

Gary W. Smith - cattle farmer, devout Christian and executive director of the Chester County Development Council - has been named Chester County's citizen of the year. Smith, 35, received the title at the sixth annual dinner and business meeting Wednesday of the Chester County Chambers of Commerce Association, representing the Downingtown, Exton Area, Oxford, Phoenixville, Greater West Chester, Southeastern Chester County and Western Chester County Chambers of Commerce. The association, which seeks to advance the "healthy and prosperous" growth of Chester County, its businesses and residents, singled out Smith - a man who "will go anywhere at any time to help anyone," according to awards committee chairman Dick Stevens - to receive its County Citizen of the Year award.

Everybody who's anybody will be at the White House tonight when President and Nancy Reagan throw their final state dinner, this one in honor of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Everybody, that is, except Dan Quayle. He wasn't invited. No slight intended, mind you. It's just that, well, the vice president-elect has been on a rotating list of senators invited to these things, explained a White House spokeswoman, and he already had been invited to one in 1982, and, besides, as vice president, "he will be going to more state dinners than he can imagine.