Category Archives: Culinary

Photoverview

Tonight I attended a dinner party at my boss’ house. It was a get together themed around Romania, being that her neighbors recently returned from a 17 day package holiday there. We planned the night to consist of purely Romanian food and drink. I made a vat of my famous cauliflower cheese soup, and she made Hungarian chicken, both straight from Pofta Buna (the Peace Corps Romania volunteer generated cookbook.) In addition, we started the evening with a shot of high quality Romanian plum brandy and accompanied the meal with wine imported from Romania (yes, a label that I’d never heard of, but from Romania, is available in Freeport, ME.) After a delightful meal I presented an updated slide show of my Peace Corps experience. It was enjoyable to make the presentation both to my boss and this couple, the latter of which had some particularly insightful comments due in part to their extensive pre-trip reading and limited exposure to the country. When I showed the iconic picture of the town in which I worked, they both immediately recognized the “palace of culture,” a national landmark.

They visited the house of Elie Wiesel (something I was not able to do,) and were impressed with my reports on Jewish life (both past and present) in the country. I guess part of me just liked being teacher, or presenter, again. It’ s enjoyable to have such social events, and I recall fondly the man telling me that he enjoyed living in Brunswick because there was a whole mix of people, not just old folks. Although I grouse about the state of American culture, it is good to see community thriving in some places.

Mix Away

What’s worse than waiting on former frat boys?

Stumped?

Waiting on future frat boys.

Today wrapped up, thankfully, the christmas party weekend at ___ Country Club. The first night was all the adult members. This party rocked. We’re talking: huge ice sculpture raw bar, sushi bar, peking duck, prime rib, and a chocolate fountain. The chocolate fountain was awesome…. the lady brought it back to the kitchen and hooked it up after they were done outside, and the whole staff gathered round it, dipping strawberries and pineapple into the warm chocolatey goodness.

But, all good things must come to an end, and these past two days kinda summed that up. Here we had the children’s christmas party. We need to have it twice because there are so many damn kids (lots of Roman Catholic members…) So we set up a kid buffet, with like fries and mini hot dogs. And we prepare 20 pitchers of shirley temples and another 20 of chocolate milk, and set up unlimited self serve soda stations. Add this to the extensive cookie and cupcake bar, and you can imagine that we have many many kids on a wild sugar high. Then santa arrives via helicopter in front of the clubhouse! After santa arrives, the kids wait in line to visit with him, which takes about 2 hours from start to finish.

So, as you can imagine, though they were mostly well behaved, I’ve been around way too many kids for these past two days. Tonight I intend to relax with a new creation I’ve come across:

Blended: A few scoops of chocolate chip ice cream… some milk… a handfull of peanut M&M’s… Kahlua.

Reading that, it’s kinda a kiddie drink except for the Kahlua… so what can I say? Though we may not all run around screeching with baloon swords and reindeer hats anymore, we all still have a little cupcake on our faces.

Salmon

Today I received two cans of the absolute best canned salmon one can buy. It came from my friend Jon as a way of saying thanks for some memory I gave him when I upgraded my machine. This stuff has the bones and the skin on and is just delicious.

Oh, and by the way, welcome to the new blog feature of my website. Although I kinda wish I’d had this for the last four years (college,) I guess I never had the time to really sit down and figure it out. But in line with my redesign of the entire site, I finally did, and now you are lucky enough to be reading my first ever post.

I will try to be somewhat amusing / thoughtful /etc, although I feel my mind going already.