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)