Miracle Ball 2013

For the eighth Miracle Ball inside the Children's Hall Dec. 14, the theme was New Beginnings, the set motifs were Chinese, and the color palette — from bright red paper lanterns to pergolas strung with cherry blossoms — delighted the more than 500 in attendance. The meal, provided by Capers, began with a splay of sesame and wasabi-seared Ahi tuna. It continued with a mesclun greens salad with mango and sweet chile vinaigrette and another splay, this time of seared Peking duck. A single-scoop Mandarin sorbet intermezzo-ed the repast, and then it was beef tenderloin with lump lobster and chanterelle risotto cakes. For dessert, it was “Lotus blossom and Double Happiness cakes” created by Jennifer Matsubara of Springdale. Official attendance for the night was 540, according to the foundation, which is the same as last year. It won’t have the final numbers on the night’s fundraising until the expenses are in, but they expect to have netted more than a half-million dollars. The live and silent auctions alone raised $267,400.