MARION — Old Rochester Family Night may mark the only time you can walk from The Marion Institute to Lebanon in just a few steps. The Feb. 7 event featured booths that showcased the food and culture of different countries, as well as booths from local organizations. 

Tables lined the walls, and those that dealt with a particular country often had food or sweets to try from that country. In the center of the multipurpose room, kids, and even some parents learned folk dances dances from all over the world, or played games as part of the event’s second iteration. 

Though an injury kept her in a wheelchair and she couldn’t dance, Sophia Sandroni kept busy making aebleskivers, a traditional Danish dessert made out of a batter that Sandroni described as like pancake batter. She stuffed the sweet snacks with chocolate chips instead of the traditional apples, and used chopsticks to turn them over. 

“I love cooking, so it wasn’t hard to learn how to make them,” Sandroni said. 

Next to her Angelina Sandroni churned out crepes, covered in cinnamon and sugar. 

“I learned how to make them today from my music teacher today,” she said. 

Across the hall, Salome Furtado’s table on the Azores featured a savory Codfish salad with potatoes, eggs and chickpeas, as well as sweet rice. 

Furtado and her husband come from Faial island in the Azores. In November they will have been here fifty years, but they still make trips back to the Azores with their children and grandchildren. 

“We had a great turnout, people had a lot of fun. You can’t ask for better than that,” said Evelyn Rivet, principal at Sippican School, to sum up the Family Night.