Belarus & Lithuania (Trust me, it's tasty)

Belarus and Lithuania joined the UN on September 17th, 1991.

I know what you're thinking. What happened to the Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan post?  Well, a 101 degree fever happened, that's what.  While everyone was enjoying a delicious meal I was curled up on my couch dying a little inside.  They sent me this photo just to rub it in:

Anywhoo, when scheduling this dinner I got confused because I kept finding a different joining date than Jenny.  Turns out the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist joined much earlier, but then changed their name to Belarus and joined again.  I'm sure you'll agree that the new name is an improvement.

This one ended up being pretty low key, just Jenny, Amber, and I.  The food looked weird, but boy it was delicious.

I chose 2 dishes, one complicated that I wasn't sure about, the other simple that I know I could do, both I had to start the days before the dinner.

The one I wasn't sure about was called "Apple Cheese".  Not what you're thinking, just apples and sugar.  But, in order to make it I had to dice the apples, mix with sugar, then let sit for 2 days...

... drain the juices, reduce the juices...

 ... add the apples and cook until they're soft... 

 ... weigh down and press for 2 more days...

... and then pray that it didn't go bad in that time, since it's not refrigerated at all.

My other recipes used wheatberries, which I never experienced or hear of before.  Soak, cook, mix, and serve, piece of cake.  And I felt even more confident when a co-worker told me he had the dish for breakfast, and his description of it matched the recipe to a T.

In the meantime Amber is giving us updates on the soup.  The pink soup...

... that keeps getting pinker...

Oh, man.

There was the cooking going on and still some cooking left to do when I arrived at Jenny's.

 Happy pink soup dance:

Jenny made these stuffed potato cakes that were pretty much the winner of the dinner, and Amber make a beet soup that looked like something the Teletubbies would eat.  It had dill in it.  More dill!!! :D

Weird looking, but tasted awesome.

After dinner we decided to go to the pool.  It wasn't that warm, and a little overcast, so Amber had a little trepidation about getting in, but after some skillful peer pressure she ended up joining us.  A charitable somebody also left us a beach ball for us to play with, which we immediately named Bob.

After the pool we walked to the local grocery store for some ice cream to add to the two desserts waiting for us.  You wouldn't think it would take very long but deciding between french vanilla, vanilla bean, and just plain old vanilla wasn't that easy.

The Apple Cheese looked NOTHING like the recipe photo.  Jenny hypothesized that I didn't chop the apples small enough, and that I need to shred it.  Maybe I will try again sometime.

What it's supposed to look like:

Nope.  Definitely didn't look like that.

All the food looked pretty odd, and I got some remarks from people when I showed them the photo, but trust me, it's tasty.  If you don't believe me, just look at those smiling faces!

(Celebrated 8/12/2017)

Moldova (Going DEEP)

Like San Marino, Azerbajian, Armenia, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan... Moldova joined the UN on March 2nd, 1992.

There was a longer than usual gap between this dinner and the last one.  6 weeks instead of the usual 4, and while I appreciated not having to worry about my next recipe for a while I was definitely itching for a UN Dinner fix by the time it rolled around.  (I also didn't choose a recipe until 2 days before the dinner).

With an estimated 7-8 people attending, I didn't feel bad about choosing a super simple recipe that I new wouldn't take much time.  Little did I know...

Jenny texts me asking for a ride a few hours before, and on the way to her place I find out that I will also need to pick up Steven.  Carpool!

Travis was hosting this dinner, and he now lived in Maple Valley.  On the way Jenny explained that one of her friends found out where we were going to for this dinner, and her reaction was to tell Jenny that Maple Valley is "deep".  We laughed a little, not really understanding what it meant, but it soon became clear as we continued to drive out of the city.  At one point we turned off the highway onto a road bordered by trees and little else, and the GPS chimed, "stay on this road for 10 miles".  Maple Valley is DEEP.

When we arrived it became clear that the menu for this meal was not going to be as I expected.  Jenny and I made some really simple (yet delicious) dishes, and Amber did her usual stuffed flatbread, but I didn't see much else going out.  There were 4 reasons for this:

1. Travis' roomies forgot about the dinner, so we were down to 6.
2. Steven only brought wine (because he also forgot about the dinner?)
3. Bryan didn't cook anything, no surprise there, he also brought wine.
4. Travis noted that there was a dinner and just decided not to cook (WTF bro?)  So he brought... you guessed it... wine.

6 people, 3 dishes, 5 bottles of wine.  And I was DD.  We had always had a rule that if you didn't cook you brought an adult drink to share, but this is a little ridiculous.

I decided to prep my dish, so all I had to do was fry it up when it came time.  Not much to do, cut tomatoes in half, chop garlic and dill, mix topping together.  That's pretty much it.  Well I guess people REALLY SHOULD HAVE COOKED SOMETHING because as soon as I got started people were asking if they could help.  It seemed a little crazy with how little I had to do, but ok.  Fyi, super excited about getting to use dill again. Definitely added twice what I needed to.  Did that with the garlic too.

Amber had pre-prepared her dish as usual, and the raw flatbreads were all stacked nicely in some tupperware.  When it came time to fry up her flatbreads they were all stuck together.  She managed to get two unstuck, but the others shredded as she pulled them apart.  Poor Amber, learning the hard way.  Somebody came up with the solution to just mash the cheesy filling and the dough together, so instead of "stuffed" it was more integrated into the dough.

Turns out, having a simple UN dinner without a ton of dishes or leftovers was just what the doctor ordered.  And Amber's dish tasted perfect.  I liked it even better because the cheesy crush gave it a little texture.

After dinner someone suggested a friendly game of baseball.  BASEBALL!?!?!?!  WHEN I'M D.D.!?!?!?!?!  GAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!  You may be wondering why being sober mattered in baseball.  Well, our baseball involves solo cups, ping pong balls, and lots of cheap beer, and I hadn't played in a while, so I was a little bummed.  We tried subbing this terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE lemonade, but it wasn't the same.

Action shot.

In case you couldn't tell, there was also a lot of dancing.

There was break between games for dessert, but when it got late it was time to head out.  It was a long drive to get out of Maple Valley (DEEP).

(Celebrated June 10th, 2017)
(Don't judge)