Serbia (Dance until you drop! Or until the neighbors get angry)

We were just about to celebrate Yugoslavia when I found out that it technically didn't exist anymore.  <Whew>  How embarrassing would it have been to have a dinner party for a country that no longer existed?  Turns out Montenegro was also part of Yugoslavia, so to answer your question it would have been really embarrassing.

Serbia (formerly part of Yugoslavia) joined the UN November 1st, 2000.

While looking for a recipe it was clear than Serbians liked their potatoes, paprika, peppers, and meat!  That sentence would have been so much better if meat somehow started with a 'p'.

I decided on Cevapi, a skinless sausage in a pita with a pepper/eggplant topping.  One of the many national dishes of Serbia!  The sausage was a piece of cake, I had no issues making the topping, the pita however...  A friend joining us was allergic to wheat so they had to be gluten free.  After searching three grocery stores and not finding any I decided that I would take a stab at making gluten-free pitas.  Everything seemed to be going well until I started flattening the dough and cooking it.  It ended up being a mess of gluten-free bread crumbs.  Curious if it still tasted good I popped one of the pieces into my mouth... and then spit it out.  Yuck!  The remaining crumbs and dough got thrown into the compost.  Gluten-free dinner rolls it is!

I don't know why but I wasn't feeling the usual pumped feeling that comes with one of these dinners.  So, on my drive over to Jenny's I hit play on my "Yeah!" playlist and a few great up-beat songs and some shameless singing in the car I was ready!  Than you Ke$ha.

 I was the first to arrive.  Bryan, Amber, and Annie soon after, and cooking frenzy began soon after that.  Except Bryan, whose only job was to watch, drink, and eat as you can see in the following photo.  Thanks for the help Bryan!

(I poke fun but he actually did help with clean up, so not a total dead weight.)

Cooking was completed without a hitch.  And once again the food was delicious!  I keep waiting for that dinner that's a total failure but I'm continually surprised by how good these dishes are.  Sure, there's a little bit of bias because we choose the recipes that look the most delicious, but that only goes so far right?

Dinner's over, time to clean up.  Unfortunately, we first did the very opposite.  We had a catastrophic failure of the only compostable bag we had, and ended up doing a little more cleaning than what was first anticipated.

Once we wiped down the floor, Amber started in on the shufnoodles.  The sugar for this dessert was generously donated by the local Seattle hotel Bryan and Amber were staying at, and as such, we needed to rip open a couple dozen packets of sugar into a bowl.

Cooking the shufnoodles was a little hazardous, the oil would spit when the shufnoodle was added and I heard Amber yelp a few times while frying them.  But they were quite delicious.  We decided they're kind of like churros but with potatoes.  So good!

After a few games of Camel Cup (or Camel Up depending on how you interpret the text) which I enjoyed a little too much to be considered healthy, we YouTubed a few traditional Serbian folk dances.  I really enjoyed watching friends try to replicate the dance as the skipped and kicked around he room (including a video that I was forbidden to post to this blog).  Until the downstairs neighbor started pounding on their ceiling.  Oops!

(Celebrated December 5th, 2015)

Switzerland (Remember to save room for nut cake)

After Years of holding out Switzerland finally became the 190th member of the United Nations.  Neutrality no more!

Thank goodness because their food was so GOOD.

Deciding what to make was difficult.  There were so many options!  Because Swiss food was a mix French, German, and Italian cuisine thanks to their shared borders, there was no shortage of options we could potentially choose.

But of course, fondue was definitely in.

When I heard Jenny was making Aelplermagronen, which is a potato-apple-mac n' cheese,  I decided that I should do a veggie dish and a dessert.  Dessert was an easy choice (nut cake!) and I was thinking I would just do a simple side salad when I saw a really interesting photo in an ad.  Hook me with the photo and reel me in with the name.  Vegducken???

Vegducken is the vegetarian version of Turducken, if you didn't figure out that from the name.  Instead of the duck in a chicken in a turkey combo, this is the zucchini in a eggplant in a squash version.  A comment was made on their website that the name was a little misleading as there is no duck or chicken and that it should be call Squeggini (SQUash, EGGplant, zucchINI).  We agreed.  Squeggini it is!  Now, this recipe isn't Swiss in any way, really, it's more of a science experiment.  But come on!  A zucchini in an eggplant in a squash?  Who could resist that?

After 4 solid hours of cooking I was off to my friends place... to do more cooking.

With past recipes I feel like though we were excited, there was still a bit of trepidation with the recipes.  In this case, it was pure excitement.  (And in Jenny's case, it was probably the excessive amount of caffeine she showed up with in her system.)

Thank goodness we agreed to do fondue as an appetizer.  And thank goodness we did it way early because that was a meal by itself.

In the midst of the cooking frenzy we decided we just HAD to take a photo with this super duper Swiss flag on her chalk board that Amber made.

And here begins the the mystery of the red socks.  Later I noticed my socks weren't a white as I remembered them.  It looked like I walked through something red and they were a little pink all over.  After checking with the others that they have the same symptoms, and a bit of searching around, we realized that the red chalk had fallen off the chalk board and we had cleaned it up with our feet.  For a minute I was worried I had accidentally dyed my most recent load of laundry red!

My Squeggini came out of the oven 15min before everything else.  It... looked... AWESOME!!!  Of course I just HAD to have a bite.  Then someone reminded me that I was supposed to add the maple butter topping, and it tasted even better.  And then they reminded me that I needed to add the toasted pecans and it tasted EVEN BETTER.  This recipe is a keeper.

After totally starting to eat before the table is even set, the food is READY!!!!!

With the table set, the variety of dishes, and the smell of the holidays in the air it was like we were celebrating Thanksgiving prematurely.  Friendsgiving!!!

As we serve ourselves I remind everyone that there still is a nut cake so don't fill up too much.  Too late!  I look up to see the piles of food that everyone had served themselves and the looks on there faces that clearly indicated that they forgot that there was a "second course".  As we ate one of my friends says, "you remember when you were serving me and I said I wanted more?  I shouldn't have said that."

Plenty of leftovers meant plenty of challenges to "eat all of that in one sitting" which included stipulations like "no throwing up" and time limits, as well as a cash reward.  It didn't happen.  We were so full.

It only took 2 hours of playing canasta for us to work up the desire to partake of the nut cake.  (It took a lot less time for us to start the innuendos.)  One small slice of delicious cake later we were all back to, "ooohhhhh jeeze I'm so full."

Yep, I said canasta.

(Celebrated November 14th, 2015)

East Timor (Did someone remember the Thiosulfate?)

East Timor joined the UN September 27th, 2002.

After I read the wiki page on the Cuisine of East Timor I knew immediately what would be expected of me: Bibinka, A grilled and layered coconut cake.

I love to bake.  And I'm not too terrible at it, but this cake made me nervous.  I read the recipe a few times before I even tried it, and then I still decided to make a "test cake" before the actual dinner.  It turned out great, but it is HEAVY.  One tiny slice and you were ready for a nap.  Lucky my office is full of hungry engineers, and it was gone within the hour after I left it in the office kitchen.

I had planned on making in the Friday before.  Of course I forgot about the "Fruity Wine & Mario Cart" night I planned with a friend for that very evening.  Couldn't do it in the morning because of the Husky Game I was going to.  (GO DAWGS!!!)  I had no choice but to leave work early to leave enough time to bake. (oh darn!)  After 2 hours of baking, and evening of slowly getting worse at Mario Cart (I blame the wine), and a football game I was on my way to my friends for this dinner.

One of the participants decided to make Cassava which is a staple in East Timor.  Cassava has to be prepared correctly because if improperly cooked can cause cyanide poisoning.  So, we prepared the snot out of it!  Not to worry, Thiosulfate will combat cyanide poisoning and can be ordered online through Amazon Prime with 1-hour delivery!

We all decided to take a bite of this root all at the same time.  If we were going down, we were going down together!  Paranoia ran rampant after dinner, including a web search for the symptoms of cyanide poisoning, but everyone was still breathing come morning.
















Please don't mind the awkward photo of my friend's chest.  It's actually, and I quote, "making the same face that she is".

(Celebrated September 12th, 2015)

Montenegro (Or as I like to call it, Mmmmmmmm-montenegro)

Montenegro became the 192nd UN Member State on June 28th, 2006.

After South Sudan being so successful we were pumped for Montenegro.  Being on the Adriatic Coast, Montenegrin food has a lot of Italian influences and flavors and an extensive selection of seafood.  (Yuck!)

I chose my dish this time: Pita Zeljanica, aka Spanikopita.  Had I known how long and  tedious it would be to make this I might have chosen something easier.  It's made by alternating filo dough and cheese/spinach layers.  Of course there were a million layers and and for each filo dough layer I needed to brush a million more dough layers with oil.  It took forever and I ended up leaving late for the dinner.

The day we scheduled for the dinner was a hot one (for Seattle).  My friend's apartment did not have any air conditioning, and with the oven on I was sweating as soon as I stepped through the door.  I brought my dish raw, so I had to bake mine as well.

But oh!  Worth it!  In addition to our prepared dishes, others brought a variety of cheeses, cured meats, and wine.  Sitting out on the deck eating that delicious food was the second best part of my day.

The best part was the dip in the pool after we were done eating.















(Celebrated June 27th, 2015)

South Sudan (Peanut Butter is Good in Anything!!!)

South Sudan became the 193rd member of the United Nations on July 14th, 2011.  Because of this I ate a lot of delicious food that contained a lot of peanut butter.

My first assignment in this venture was to produce some Kissra or Goraasa which is traditional Sudanese bread.  To me they seem more like tortillas with different kinds of flour.  I pre-made some Goraasa (since Kissra needs to be mixed the day before which I didn't realize until the day of) and headed to my friends house.  By the time I got there they were already cooking up a storm, which included several jars of peanut butter.

Throughout the entire process we were all feeling a little nervous.  The food combinations we were making (or I should say they were making as I was just watching the masters at work) seemed odd, and having never made these dishes before we had not idea if it was looking like it should.

But holy moley was it GOOD!  I ate until I couldn't eat any more and I still wanted seconds.. and thirds.  I would definitely make this meal again!

(Celebrated April, 25th, 2015)

Welcome to the United Nations Dinner Party... Online!

So one day a friend invites me to a South Sudan dinner party.  Not knowing anything about South Sudan I thought it sounded like a charity event.  Sure, I'm in!  Now what exactly is this event we are going to?

After further clarification, I found out that they were planning on throwing a series of dinner parties, one for every country that has joining the United Nations.  To be held in reverse order of when they joined.  South Sudan was the most recent member, so we would start there.

After we held a couple I realized I needed someplace to record recipes, reviews, and weird little things we learned about each country.  The first few posts are "catch up" as they were held over the past few months,  I hope to keep the blog up to date for future dinners.

Please note that the recipes are a collection of things we found online with modifications for personal preferences and dietary restrictions.  I hope we get at least close to authentic, but I honestly have no idea.  I imagine if the natives watched us prepare these meals they would likely end up laughing at us.

Enjoy!