Foodie Night and Top Chef

We had our first foodie book club meeting at Jess's place last night, and I was the only guy. I probably should have seen that coming. I got to enjoy some fine company with some lovely ladies and dine on African cuisine from The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa by Marcus Samuelsson.

Our spread consisted of the following:

Vegetable samosas, spicy okra, spicy tilapia stew, callaloo (a creamed spinach-like soup from Trinidad and Tobago).
Des and I brought yellow rice and red lamb curry (to which we forgot to add yogurt, but it still turned out well).
Finally, we had yummy fried banana fritters for dessert.

Everything turned out really well, the only problem was that we all kind of went in the same spicy direction, so there was little to balance the spiciness from dish to dish.

-S

The foodie book club meeting was a success, I think! It was fun to be able to try 7 or 8 different things from one cookbook, when usually it would take a long time to get through that many recipes on your own. And I liked the cookbook - there are 10-15 pages of different rubs and seasonings that I want to try out - berbere, ras-al-hanout, etc.


As for Top Chef: I cannot believe Lisa didn't go home again!! Spike was sent home instead of her. This has happened two or three weeks in a row, where Lisa and someone else are up on the chopping block, and Lisa stays. And she's been staying not for the food, but because of some technicality that the other person supposedly messed up (last week, not enough leadership; this week, didn't send back the scallops when they didn't look so great - but how could Spike have known that he COULD send back the scallops? If he would have tried, they probably would have faulted him for that, too!). Ridiculousness.

Anyway, left are "Greasa"-Lisa, Stephanie, Richard, and Antonia. Of course no one is rooting for Greasa, but I'm rooting for Antonia, and Steve is for Richard. If Lisa makes it to the Top 3 and one of the others is sent home, I may have to stop watching or send some sort of nasty email to Tom Colicchio.

-D

A team of 11... and we still lost!

I'm on break from school this week, so Steve and I decided to get a super Quizzo team together last night. We invited the best Quizzo players we know, namely Leah and Jess, as well as a few others. We expected that our team would have maybe 4-6 members, because usually only about a quarter of our invitees show up. But this time just about everyone came, and our team had 11 members. So you'd think we'd have won! Nope. Somehow we came in 5th or 6th place. Oh well.

It was still a lot of fun - I'm glad everyone showed up. We won a round, so we got a free pitcher. And I won an Eagles pint glass filled with beer cozies and keychains by answering the question "what is the newest book from Oprah's book club" (answer: A Fine Balance). I haven't read the book, and I don't watch Oprah, but I have to admit that her book club is generally pretty good - 100 Years of Solitude was one of her book club books, and that is one of my favorites. My mom actually gave me the book A Fine Balance and told me not to be put off by the fact that it is an Oprah book. So thanks, mom. If you hadn't specifically thought that I'd dismiss the book because of Oprah and hadn't warned me against that dismissal, I would have never remembered that A Fine Balance was in the Oprah Book Club, and I would have 4 less Miller Lite keychains.

I don't think that there were any particulary interesting questions last night (Steve may remember some though), so I'll rewind to Quizzo a few months ago. Question: What tree's sap is turpentine made of? Answer: Pine. Reason we got the answer right: Pine rhymes with turpentine.

D