Last Weekend

Last weekend was very full for us, so let me fill you in on the details and the menus that coincide before I go back to bed. Pictures to follow. Friday was dinner for eight adults and five kids at Karen & Gabe’s home. Appetizers were  marinated chicken wings with a mango/pineapple chutney. Dinner was a choice of two stews: chicken with plantain and beef veggie over rice. Nicole brought her famous cornbread and I contributed the cranberry walnut tart for dessert which I highly recommend warmed with a dollop of vanilla ice cream or hand-whipped cream. Side note: heavy cream whips better when very cold and in a refrigerated cold bowl.  We ate until stuffed, drank a wine new to me (Murphy-Goode?), and sang to some Guns n Roses and other high-school tunes which Gabe blasted from his music intercom. Saturday evening was the true singing contest at the karaoke party hosted by Chris and Yvette. There were about twenty people in all belting out classics such as by Anita Baker and   Frank Sinatra. I must say, these people were hard-core singers and no one was out of tune in the least. Ok, if you have your own cd cleaning apparatus and drive to NY to buy your music from a wholesale warehouse, you are hard-core about karaoke. One guy seriously could have been the main act on a cruise ship and he knew all Rat-Pack songs by heart. He brought his own boom box hooked up to his laptop. Serious. Dinner was a roasted pork loin for the meat lovers or lentil stew over rice and salad with avacadoes for nerds like me. There were more side-dishes and such, but the lentils were so flavorful  that that’s all I remember. Yvette is Puerto Rican and her lentils taste totally different from how mine taste. I brought over a Charles Shaw Pinot and an appetizer of blue corn chips and hot & spicy cheese dip. Dessert was a choice of chocolate cake from Costco or  Chrissy’s homemade flan. Guess which one I chose. Yep. Three pieces. Chrissy tried to explain to me how to make a perfect caramel sauce with melted sugar, but my profuse chewing and swallowing the creamy dreaminess drowned out her voice. Sorry, Chrissy. I will just Google how to make caramel sauce if need be. Sunday was our day to hang out with the Reeser family whose two daughters I helped raise for like four years as their nanny while home-schooling my own daughter. We also lived with them on and off between moving to and from South America, so this family really is like our family. Dinner was by Bamboo Garden, an Asian fusion restaurant near their home. I am rarely impressed by restaurant food, and this was just another confirmation. Maybe it was because I ordered the wrong thing: a bowl of curry flavored noodles with shredded veggies in it. Too many noodles, veggies were almost non-existent. But the noodles were filling and the flavor was decent. Back at their house we prepared for game night by setting out the goods: Italian soda, Trader Joe’s five-layer bean dip with long-board tortilla chips, limitless beer, and lots of junk food not eaten by yours truly. Christina made us girls a wonderful chai latte with steamed milk and all. The liquid mix comes in a carton sold at Trader Joe’s in the coffee & tea section. I personally don’t buy it because of the sugar content, but it was a nice treat. The real treat of the evening though was inviting over their neighbor Barry who recently moved here from New Orleans. Needless to say he was thrilled when the Saints started to lead over the Colts. We were all dying laughing as he kept screaming in delight, throwing himself on the floor to break dance in ecstatic convulsions, and calling random friends and family down South. In all his excitement, he couldn’t remember his brother Ricky’s phone number and kept dialing strangers. “Ricky?! Is this Ricky?! WHO DAT ‘BOUT TO WIN THE SUPER BOWL!!?? WHO DAT!?? WHO DAT, BABY!!?…who is this??”.