Georgia (My dumplings are bursting at the thought)

You may compare the date on this post to the date that this dinner was celebrated.  Shameful, I know.  In my defense, it's been a busy month!  The day of the dinner was no different.

The night before I made the fillings.  No issues there.

First thing in the morning I made the dough, stuffed the dumplings, and cooked them.  These dumpling are supposed to be very juicy.  When you take your first bite, you are supposed to suck out all the juice before eating the rest.  I think I rolled it out too thin so when I put them in the boiling water most of them burst.  How disappointed was I!  I would usually try again, but because I was on a schedule I didn't have the time so I unhappily piled the mess of broken dumpling sacks and loose meatballs into a container.

How they are supposed to look:

How they ended up looking:

After practicing my French Horn for an hour I left for my concert.  Warm-up, performance, cheers of admiration, and I was off to the dinner, my mess of a recipe in tow.

Dinner was being held at a new venue.  Our hosts have tried to attend several times but due to, well, life, they were never able to make it.  This time their attendance was guaranteed.  It was at their house.

I made the mistake of trusting google blindly, and I ended up waiting for twenty minutes for a ferry to show up.  I arrive a little past seven, everyone politely waiting for me to start.

Quick, reheat my food, and dinner!

Similar to last time, 9 people were planning on attending.  Unlike last time, 9 people showed up!

With such a large group, there was quite a selection of dishes (including two desserts!), and it was all good.  Most in attendance had not experienced the glory that is the UN Dinner Party before, so it was really fun to hear sentiments from them that I had already been experiencing for over a year now.

Dinner barely over, and I'm already pumped for the next one!

Fyi, I remade the dumplings with the leftovers I had in my fridge the next day.  They came out perfect!

(Celebrated December 3rd, 2016)

Czech Republic & Slovakia (Make enough for 9! No wait, just 5. Um... I think there will only be 3.)

Both the Czech Republic and Slovakia joined the UN January 19th, 1993.

As we dictated earlier in the year, since they joined at the same time, are located next to each other, and have very similar food, we decided to celebrate them together.  When we divvied who would do what I got assigned Slovakia.

While perusing through the various options for Slovakian... correction... Slovak dishes to make I started noticing a patter of rich, hearty and/or cheesy dishes that made me drool.  It also made me crave vegetables, so my next search was "Slovak vegetable recipe".  I was sold when my eyes landed on stuffed tomatoes.

With an anticipated attendance of a new record, 9 people, I made sure to buy enough for 10 tomatoes, expecting 1-2 leftover tomatoes that I could enjoy sometime during the following week.  One of our guests would also be attending during his birthday, so I agreed to make something that we could stick a candle in.  After a short period of searching I landed on a Slovak pound cake.  Simple and easy, yet delicious!

The day before Amber (aka "would-be host" of the Czech Republic/Slovakia dinner party) reaches out and asks if I would be willing to host.  Her house was still under construction from some roof issues and it wasn't in a state to accommodate the crowd we were expecting.  Looking around my less than 600 square foot, single bedroom apartment, I was like... sure!

The following morning was spent tidying up, making sure I had enough beverages for 9, and pulling out my folding tables and chairs.

After texting Amber to bring the last few chairs I would need, she responds that a few people could no longer make it since my place was much further away than hers.  We were down to 5.

Not a problem!  Actually, much more manageable in my tiny apartment.  So I put away my card table and left the long one up.  I was also able to put away a chair.  I decided I still would make all of the tomatoes and the cake, since more leftovers for me, and the birthday boy was still coming.

Or so I thought.

I finish cooking...

...when Jenny shows up to cook her meal, and she tells me a few more people dropped out.  One is sick, the other is double booked.  It was going to be 3-4 people, depending on if Bryan shows.

He didn't.  But his Czech/Slovak beer did!

So it's down to the original three.  The Three Musketeers!  The Fantastic Three!  The three without which the dinners could not and would not be held!

It got weird.

Maybe it was because it was raining, but there was something in the air.  I tried taking a photo of my lovely co-musketeers twice, but SOMEbody was unable to pull herself together.

Let's take another look...

There was some slurring of words, odd conversations, trying on of Halloween masks, ending in doing the P.P.A.P. with full participation.

If you don't know what that is, don't feel bad.  I didn't either.  And I still don't.

All in all it was a fantastic dinner party.  The food was deeeee-licious, the company was... "superb" would be an understatement, and at the end of the day we were all quite proud of ourselves since we made the perfect amount of food.

For 9 people.

(Celebrated October 1st, 2016)

Macedonia (That food may be Gouda, but this one is Feta!)

Sorry.  Was that joke "cheesy"?

Macedonia (aka the The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) joined the UN on April 8th, 1993.  The first thing I learned about Macedonia is that a 90% of their meals include some type of feta cheese.

Ok, so maybe that's not true, but it was for this dinner!

This was our first Friday dinner.  In order to allow for people to "decompress" after work, we scheduled it for 8pm.  In order to compensate for that unusually late dinner (my normal is 6pm at the latest) I had a pre-dinner meal, but it didn't help much once everyone started cooking.  Especially since everything had feta in it.  Mmmmmmm, feta!

It was a fairly calm dinner.  I prefer when it gets rowdy.  I blame Friday.  But, it was good!

Between the hunger and the tired, I don't think anyone was very careful about making sure we got good pictures.  We managed to piece together enough of a thought to take two pictures.  One of my plate:

Clockwise starting at 12: Cheese Dip, Shopska Salata, Burek,
and Mamaliga in the middle.

 And the other which turned out to be the worst group selfie ever:

I was too hungry and tired to try again.  That and it was a new phone and I didn't know how to turn on the flash.  We're only smiling because we're finally getting to eat.  Notice that one of us couldn't smile very well as his mouth was already full.

Now that I think about it, this was the best selfie ever.

(Celebrated August 12, 2016)

Eritrea (Err-ih-treeeeeee-yah)

Here we are again!  After a 4 month hiatus our lives finally settled enough that we found a time to celebrate Eritrea.  The first dinner in the second year of the awesomeness that is the UN dinners!

Eritrea joined the UN May 28th 1993, same day as Monaco.

Eritrean food is only subtly different from Ethiopian food.  Or so I'm told.  I couldn't tell the difference.  Doesn't matter.  It's delicious either way.

I was to make the bread, which included hembesha, kitcha, and the spongee, sour, crepe-like injera that the dishes are usually served on.  I located some recipes, and then promptly forgot about it until Amber sent out our usual "I so excited about the UN dinner!" text.  The day before the dinner I pull out the recipes.  Injera requires you to prepare the batter an then let it ferment for up to three days.  Oops.  Well, one day might be enough, right?

Little did I know how hard it would be to find teff flour in Seattle.  Four grocery stores, two hours of googling, and phone call to a fifth store later only produced teff seeds.  I could just grind that into the flour, right?  Turns out teff seeds are so small my processor just mixed them around and didn't grind, and my mortar and pestle managed to do nothing but make a mess.  So I tucked my tail between my legs and texted my friends that I was giving up on injera.  Jenny graciously offered to pick up some pre-made injera at an Ethiopian market instead.

I still got everything else together for the kitcha and hembesha and Jenny picked me up to head over the Amber and Bryan's.

With a record 7 people attending the dinner, it was quite a cooking frenzy once everyone got going.

As we worked there was a quick discussion on the pronunciation of Eritrea.  I admitted that I YouTubed the correct pronunciation, and it reminded me of Sesame Street when they would teach you a new word.  "Eritrea.  Err-ih-trEEEEE-Yah.  Eritrea."



Like Monaco, tears were shed for the onions we were massacring.  Some openly, others hiding their shame.

But seriously, there was so much onion in the air I was tearing up and I wasn't even doing any of the chopping.

This was Arjun's first time attending a UN dinner.  I did not hide my amusement at his cooking skills, or lack thereof.  When it came time to dice the garlic I explained how I found it easiest to remove the husk by taking the flat of the knife and pounding it down over the clove.  His first attempt was too gentle, so on the next try he brought his fist down hard and the clove shot out from beneath the knife, narrowly missing Jenny as she worked on her own dish.  Arjun decided that this strategy for husk removal might not be for him.  I don't blame him.

After shooting for a 6pm dinner the meal was finally ready around 7.

Oh my gosh so good!  Again!
So many leftovers!  Again!

(Celebrated July 16th, 2016)

Monaco (You haven't cried this hard since Titanic)

Monaco join the UN May 28th 1993.  (Same day as Eritrea, but we'll get to that later.)

Just one short week after the last dinner we had yet another planned.  This one was unique since it coincided with a weekend getaway to Long Beach, WA, home of Jake the Alligator Man!

Cooking was done in stages, starting with Amber making some home made chickpea flour for the Socca she was making before leaving for the cabin we were renting.  I thought she was doing this because she couldn't find it in the stores, but she actually wanted to make it.  Kookie girl.

After our first night at the cabin and our morning visit to Marsh's Free Museum to see Jake, first up for the kitchen was Jenny in the early afternoon to prepare her Onion Monegasque since they needed to sit for a few hours.

Next was Travis, preparing his Cassoulet.  Cassoulet is named for the type of pot it is traditionally cooked in, the Cassole.  It it were named for the pot he cooked it in it would be called the "slow-cooker-oulet".

Before starting to cook Travis tried to get someone else to cut up the onion he needed for his dish.  Upon further inquiry we found out that onions make Travis very, very sad.  I didn't believe it was any more than anyone else, but once he got going it became very clear why he didn't want to chop that onion.  Being the sensitive person that I am, I immediately started laughing after seeing his red puffy eyes and tear stained cheeks.  

Once his Cassoulet was slow-cooking away it was my turn.  I made Barbaguians, which are little pastry dumplings that first required you to make the dough, then the filling, then cut out the rounds, wrap them up, and fry them.  They were quite the effort.  Meanwhile the rest of the gang start a game of monopoly with Bryan standing in as my proxy, aka, rolling the dice.

Despite my limited involvement, it was, in fact, the best game of monopoly I every played.  That is to say, I did not immediately go bankrupt.  I addition, I was up against Jenny, the most ferocious monopoly player you will ever meet.  Pity is not in her vocabulary.

Bryan held on as long as he could, but was the first to go.  Meanwhile Amber and I have to put the finishing touches on our dishes so he steps in for Amber.  And goes bankrupt.  So I let him stand in in for me.  And promptly looses the game.  Not his fault. He might as well have been going hand to hand with the Hulk.

If you can't tell from the photo, Jenny really enjoys this game.  The entire time not only is she ruthlessly negotiating her way to the top, but jumps into other's negotiations to broker deals without being solicited to do so.  The entire time with that silly grin on her face.

Once we were sufficiently beaten down by Jenny it was time for dinner, so I finish frying up my dumplings...

 ... and Amber finishes up frying her Socca...

 ... and we finally get to set the table for dinner!

What was Bryan's contribution this week you ask?  How about some really delicious wine to drown our monopoly sorrows.

I'm sure he regretted the contribution later, as it directly resulted in the evening ending in Twister, somersaults, and cartwheels, instigated by his significant other.

(Celebrated March 12th, 2016)

Andorra (I bread your pardon?!?!?!?)

On July 28th, 1993 Andorra joined the United Nations.

Andorra (aka, the Principality of Andorra) is located between Spain and France.  It is the sixth smallest nation in Europe, covering an area a little over 180 square miles, and has a population of a little over 85,000 people.  The cuisine there is primarily Catalan (Catalonia is a part of Spain), but has French influences as well for obvious reasons.

I was interested in making two dishes which was forcefully reduced to one as Amber tried to steal them from me, but I managed to hold onto pa amb tomàquet which is bread, primarily peasant bread, smeared with tomato and oil, and sometimes garlic.

I have made many pastries before, including breads, but the recipe I chose threw me off as the dough turned out a lot wetter and stickier than I expected it, even with all the extra flour I added.  Anyways, I poured it into some pie dishes (bad choice, which I regrettably did not lubricate beforehand) and packed them to go.  As you can see, unwrapping it was a bit challenging.



Actually, now that I think about it maybe the consistency was fine.  Shoot.  I don't know, it was all tasty in the end!

I baked it once I got to Amber and Bryan's (nothing is better than the smell of fresh baked bread!), and after that I popped in the garlic to roast (nothing is better than the smell of garlic roasting in the over except for fresh baked bread!).  It smelt good!  My goal was to have the pa amb tomaquet as a sort of appetizer, but the rest of the dinner was ready soon after.

I really enjoyed this meal.  Simple and delicious!  As proof I offer you the following:

Before:

After:

After scraping our plates clean, Amber put the finishing touches on the dessert which was a sweet berry Coco.

The crust was crispy on the edges and doughy in the middle and was a little tart, not overly sweet like some desserts.  Nice job Amber!

Compared to previous meals, Jenny and I agreed we had it easy.  The recipes we chose didn't take much effort.  Meanwhile, the entire time we are cooking Amber is talking about "Bryan's dish", and what "Bryan was making".  In reality, Bryan was busy shooting things on his TV as Amber finished prepping and cooking two dishes!

It's okay Bryan, I'm not giving you a hard time.  Really.  Quite the opposite.

ALL HAIL BRYAN!
KING OF CLEAN UP!
LORD OF KITCHEN TIDINESS!
WE ARE BUT INSECTS IN THE VAST SHADOW THAT IS YOUR CLEANLINESS!!!

As the rest of us ladies proceeded to enjoying some drawing games Bryan spent the next hour?... hour and a half?... cleaning up after our kitchen Armageddon.  Thanks Bryan!

(Celebrated March 7th, 2016)

Palau (Dinner AND a show!)

Palau joined the United Nations on December 15th, 1994.

In searching for a recipe I found Palauans really like fried food and barbecue.  This is going to be a heavy meal.

I settled on Taro Rosti, Taro being a type of root.  I was off to Uwajiamya again to find this Taro, and while they do carry it, they had none when I was there.  Instead I got some Baby Taro which I was told was "99% exactly the same as big Taro" by an employee working there (I think the same one who gave me directions to Viet Wah last time!)  So I bought a couple pounds and hoped for the best.

Peeling them was way easier than I thought they would be, but what I didn't expect was how slimy the root was.  You would get it on your hands and utensils and it was impossible to wash off.  Slimy root Taro.  I finished prepping the Taro mixture and left for my friend's place.

When I got there Jenny was working on what looked like a bloated cucumber.  Quickly learned it was a green papaya.  Surprised again when when she cut it open and it was full of these weird little seeds.

Everything got prepped, but we had some time before we wanted to eat so we set everything aside to play some games.  After one or two rounds we returned to finish our meal.

Both Amber and I had to fry our mixtures, I pan fried and she deep fried (Palauans really like fried food!), and both Amber and I had no idea what we were doing.  We did manage to make some semblance of the patties we were supposed to, though there was a portion of Amber's mixture that turned into a bit of a scramble, and mine were taking FOREVER!

Since I was basically holding up the meal, I decided to make "enough" instead of all the batter, and the last one I made I forewent the individual patties and made a pan sized pancake.  Once one side of the "pancake" was cooked I picked up the pan, turned to my friends, and jokingly said, "Watch me toss it in the air to flip it!"  While I expected disapproving looks from the owners of the establishment, instead I got a lot of exited looks and a bunch of, "Yeah!"s, and, "Do it!"s.

Well, okay then.  Don't try this at home folks!

To my surprise and elation, about 90% of the rosti actually made it back into the pan!  Dinner and a show!  I wish we thought of taking an action photo.  I did get a photo of the mess-but-not-as-bad-a-mess-as-I-expected.

Finally, dinner!

I say this every time, but I really mean it this time when I say that I was nervous about trying this food.  The ingredients and the way they almost didn't quite make it into the form that they were supposed to be in, I was sure I did something wrong.

But I was wrong. It was delicious.

The Taro Rosti was surprisingly sweet.  The soup, despite the excessive amount of ginger Jenny used, was delicious.  And I even enjoyed some of the Ukoy with the shrimp and fish sauce in it!  I hate seafood!  All-in-all, another very successful meal.  I feel even more accomplished because of the unusually low level of confidence I had during cooking.

Dessert was mango and dragon fruit.  I never had dragon fruit before, and nothing about it was what I expected.  The contrast between the outside of the fruit and the inside when Bryan cut it open was surprising.  Typically fruit has some set pattern to the seeds, but this one looked like they had filled the fruit with white gel and black little seeds, and then shook it up and let it set.

The taste was also unusual.  Not comparable to any other fruit, yet there was something familiar I could not put my finger on.  And I loved the texture.  Very kiwi-esque.

Here ends the Palau United Nations Dinner Party!  Finally, I can start talking about our next dinner!!!

(Celebrated February 13th, 2016)

Tuvalu, Tonga, Kirbati, & Nauru (Happy Tuv-onga-bat-uru Dinner Party!!!)

Tuvalu joined the United Nations on September 5th, 2000.
Tonga, Kiribati, and Nauru joined a year earlier on September 14th, 1999.

The decision was made to celebrate all four together as a result of some quick math:

Let's see...  We've done 5 countries in 8 months.  There are 193 countries in the United Nations currently.  At that rate we would complete the series of dinners after... carry the one... 309 months.

Wait what?  That's almost 26 years!!!!!  I'd be 54!

In order to live long enough to see the end of these dinners we have decided to hold a dinner once a month (that alone will reduce the time it takes to only 16 years), and those countries from similar regions and with similar food who joined one after the other would be celebrated all at once. Therefore...

Happy Tuv-onga-bat-uru Dinner Party!!!  Tuvalu, Tonga, Kiribati, and Nauru are all island nations of the central Pacific Ocean.  Everyone was assigned a country, and everyone brought a dish from that country.  Jenny got Tuvalu (or "TOOOOOOVALOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" as she likes to call it) and Amber got Nauru.  Even Bryan had to carry his weight this time, so he was assigned Tonga.  He negotiated cooking a dish down to bringing some sort of "adult beverage" from the region, and then pleasantly surprised us by actually cooking a dish!  I was assigned Kiribati.

Kiribati is made up of 33 coral atolls spread across 1,351,000 square miles of ocean.  Because the high saline content in the soil, vegetation is limited and they have to import most of what they need.  In addition, with the oceans rising they are rapidly loosing land mass and have been negotiation with Fiji to purchase land and relocate their population of 103,000 people .  Could you imagine your country just disappearing into the ocean?  No more country?

All of these countries are really big on fish since it is the one thing readily available so I was worried I would be hard pressed to find a recipe without seafood.  I'm not a picky eater, but if there is one thing I can not stand, it's seafood.  (If there's a second thing I can't stand it's spicy.)  Luckily I was able to find a very promising recipe where nothing in it was pulled out of the ocean: Sweet Coco Pumpkin with Pandan Leaves.  Four ingredients, two of which I never heard of before.

Pandan leaves and kobacha pumpkins required a trip to China Town to find.  I started at Uwajimaya, and I found plenty of kobacha pumpkins, but pandan leaves were a little harder to track down.  Luckily a knowledgeable produce clerk gave me directions to a store that carried it, and after circling China Town for a while I finally found what I was looking for.  Viet Wah had both frozen and fresh pandan leaves, though they were labeled the Vietnamese name "la dua" so it wasn't as obvious as I would have liked.

The day arrived, people started arriving, and we started cooking.  A lot of what was brought was pre-prepared or didn't take a lot of time, so the cooking portion of this meal wasn't as large an event as it has been for previous meals.  Probably a good thing considering this time it was held in my teeny-tiny kitchen!

We have gotten so into these dinners at this point that we would start discussing the next countries long before the dinner we are currently celebrating is over.  There was some feedback that the dinners are more enjoyable if we are only focusing on that dinner, so we agreed, no more discussing future dinners until the current one is over!  A little late, as we had already been discussing several future dinners, but it should work out once we get past all that.

Once again I have no complaints about our meal!  And once again I can't seem to stop myself from overdoing it.  We always have music playing and I tend to belt out the tunes as we go, but I was so full I couldn't sing as aggressively for fear of my full belly not being able to cope.

Too full for dessert, we started a game of canasta.  After a few rounds we decided that we digested enough of dinner to try the tasty little banana-coconut balls Bryan made.  I thought the Faikakai Malimalis (say that ten times fast!) were like dense little balls of banana bread rolled and lathered in coconutty goodness.  I'm drooling just thinking about them.

After, we returned to the game which just happened to get extremely intense right after stuffing ourselves with dessert.  The discard pile grew to half the deck and I could feel my heart pumping in my throat (along with the Faikakai Malimalis I just ate) and just as I thought I was about to throw up... the other team picked up the pile.  Ahhhhhhhh!!!  Between the food and coming down off that emotional roller coaster I was spent.  (If you can't tell, I get weird when it comes to canasta.)

(Celebrated January 23rd, 2016)