Zimbabwe (Happy Zimbabwean Ugly UN Xmas Sweater Dinner Party!)

And a Happy New Year!  Last Dinner of the year is dedicated to Zimbabwe.  Joined August 25th, 1980.  First country since Switzerland that I've been to!  Embarrassed to say, while we were there we mostly ate burgers and pizza...

Per Jenny's suggestion, I focused on finding a dessert recipe... or 3.  Needless to say, I had a lot of baking to do Saturday morning, and more than I had anticipated.  Cookies went as expected.  Glaze is like crack it's so good.  Mapopo ended up okay, though not the consistency I expected.  If you had any loose cavities they would be gone after eating that sticky deliciousness.  Candy cake however, was the bane of my existence.

First time I mixed the batter a did a giant baking no-no (I know better!) and I tried to mix cold butter in with the liquids.  What a chunky disaster.  I kept adding sugar and flour thinking it would smooth out.  It didn't.

Second time I mixed the batter I misread the recipe and added the sugar for the frosting to he batter as well.  It was dense, but I was also getting fed up so I tried to bake it anyway...

... unsuccessfully.

So I mixed it for a 3rd time.  The bake went well, right up until I burnt them again.

When I arrived at Amber's I was overwhelmed by the festive sweaters.  Though I did not get the memo about them being dog themed...

"Dachshund Through the Snow"

"Pugly Xmas Sweater"

 As you would expect, many of our African main courses were full of peanut butter and delicious.

In order to help digestion, Jenny and Amber had the forethought to print out some Christmas Charades.  Turns out most of us had never even played any sort of charades.  How to charades candy cane without making a lewd jesture, I do not know.

Then, dessert!  If you are choosing one of the recipes, the sweet potato cookies are the real winner of the evening.  (And that glaze!)

The only thing left to say is Happy Zimbabwean Ugly UN Xmas Sweater Dinner Party!

(Celebrated December 8th, 2018)

St. Vincent & The Grenadines (the dough boy got bushwacked)

Chantelle and David popped their UN dinner hosting cherry on St. Vincent & the Grenadines.  This Caribbean island nation joined the UN on September 16th, 1980.  Nothing like some tropical food in the middle of rainy October!

Jenny and Amber were fresh back from their yearly jaunt to Nashville, TN, where they discovered a tantalizing drink called a Bushwacker.  Think Wendy's frosty but with the potential of being as much as 75% alcohol.  Jenny's contribution was going to be some home made Bushwackers, so I made sure not to be DD that night.  (Fyi, DD means "designated driver".  Not "drunk driver" or "designated drunk" like my parents thought when I was first recalling this evening to them.)

After finishing rolling my dumplings and stuffing my cucumbers I was off to dinner.  (Can't have a good blog post without a food related innuendo.)

Don't remember what we ate.
Don't remember what we talked about.
Don't remember why I made a note in my phone, and I quote, "I touched your bun (and not the dough boy)".
I think I got bushwacked.  Though I don't know what I was expecting after three of them.

I leave you with the only reason we could remember as much of the evening as we did.  The few photos we took that night!

(Celebrated October 27th, 2018)

Vanuatu (Surprise UN Brunch Party!!!)

Vanuatu joined the UN September 16th, 1980.

Little did I know I would be celebrating it so soon.

We had some wine tasting in the calendar, and in order to get there on time I took a red eye in from Maryland, so when I was asked if I wanted to do a brunch that same weekend, my answer was no.  Gone the week before, no time to prep, nope, not gonna happen.

Did that stop my friends?  Nope.

Surprise UN Brunch Party Vanuatu!!!

Vanuatu is a Pacific Island Nation, so they eat a lot for fruits, fish, pig, and fowl, and is heavily influence by their surrounding countries.

Since I obviously did not have anything prepared, I help Amber cut some fruit with the help of YouTube since I have no idea how to prep Jackfruit.  Jackfruit, Lychee, Mango, Plums, Baby Bananas... Unfortunately, the Papaya didn't meet freshness standards so it had to go.

 

No too long for Jenny to get the banana pancakes done, so we got to dig in without (relatively) too much effort.

I think I'm addicted to Jackfruit now.

(Celebrated August 26th, 2018)

Belize (You better Belize it!)

Belize joined the UN September 25th, 1981.  Our first Central American Country!!!

My first step was to order some achiote paste, which from my reading was how many Central American countries often seasoned their dishes.  It's smelly, playdough consistency, and dyes everything red.  Your hands, plastic utensils, your counter, everything.

I chose to make Salbutes, which is very similar to Tostadas.  One of the ingredients was Stew Chicken, so I ended up making that as well.

As usual I spent the entire morning cooking.  While I was heating up some oil to fry the salbutes, I distracted myself with chopping up vegetables for the stew chicken, because if I didn't multitask I wasn't going to get it done.  Next thing I know, smoke is billowing out of the oil pan.  I move it off the heat but it continues to billow.  The fire alarm goes off as my small apartment quickly fills up with smoke.  I eventually can not longer breath, so I abandon my smoking oil and loud fire alarm to exit out the porch door with columns of smoke following me.  It must have been a sight.

A few quick trips into the inferno to turn on some fans, and 15min later I was able to get back to work, this time heating the oil to a lower temperature.

A few reasons let me to take an Uber to Iain and Laura's, out gracious host for this particular dinner.  (one of which was the banana daiquiri Iain was making.)  I arrived at Iain's five past six to find everyone already there.  A few minutes later I was lucky enough to witness the most hilarious preparation of a banana daiquiri ever.

It started with placing everything into a large cooking pot.  Step two was to take a hand mixer and futilely attempt to blend the ice with it.

After failing, everything was then transferred to a food processor after struggling to unstick the hardened honey form the hand mixer.  This was done in batches as the processor was too small to accommodate.

At this time we abandoned Iain to take a tour of the house, and when we got back we found him scooping the mess out with his hands because, and I quote, "we're all friends here."

I still had two servings.

A bit more cooking and dinner was served.

(Celebrated August 4th, 2018)

Antigua and Barbuda, & Saint Kitts and Nevis (Float like a butterfly, sting like a Killer Bee Cocktail)

Antigua and Barbuda joined the UN November 11th 1981, and Saint Kitts and Nevis joined September 23rd, 1983.

Truth time.  It's been over 3 weeks since we had this dinner.  I don't remember much.  Here's what I do remember:

1. I went to 3 different Asian markets to find passion fruit puree.
2. Pepper actually really is delicious in a cocktail.  Who knew?
3. It's possible to be addicted to plantains.
4. The food was FREAKING DELICIOUS.

(Celebrated July 7th, 2018)

Brunei (All-natural Dinner, Un-natural Dessert)

Brunei Darussalam joined the UN September 21, 1984.

Brunei is a dry nation.  No booze.  Which immediately prompted the question, "We're not doing that, are we?"

The last dinner did not have a dessert, so I was assigned dessert for this one, and boy, did I find some.

Fun ingredients...

... fun to make...

... not always so fun to sample...

For the Es Cendol, aka Bahn Loh, aka green stuff, I was shopping for the ingredients when I came across a packet for Bahn Loh that was a "just add water" sort of thing.  I made it.  But when I sampled it... well, see above photo.

I also made some crazy looking cup cakes that I was really excited to have as backup to the weird green stuff.

When I got to amber's I decided to go ahead and make the Es Cendol from scratch with the hope it would come out less gross.  Thank goodness it did.

I was done in a jiffy and had the joy of watching the others cook while I enjoyed a cold one.

In no time the other guests arrived and it was dinner time.  Cue the usual terrible group photo.

Not only was it delicious, it actually seemed relatively healthy too.  That is, until dessert.

Between the neon cupcakes and the green worms we all had doubts.  In fact, it was pretty good.  The only problem was the crash that arrived shortly after the sugar high.

(Celebrate May 12th, 2018)

Namibia (I bless the potjies down in Africa)

Namibia joined April 23rd, 1990.

I have never been to Namibia, but I can say that I've seen it from the shores of Botswana.

I wanted potjies.  I just didn't want to make them.  Because if I made one, I would want meat.  I would have zero motivation to make one without meat.  But by making one with meat it means I would have to make another with veggies anyway for the vegetarian in our group.  And I really didn't want to make one, much less two.  But here I am.  Making two potjies.

Fun fact, potjie is not pronounce pot-gee like and good American would think.  Instead it's pronounced poi-kee.  Where's the K?  I don't know.

Also fun fact, potjies are traditionally not stirred.  The goal is to have distinct flavors from bite to bite, instead of mixing and making all the flavors meld so each bite tastes the same.  The pot is strategically layered, typically with the meat at the bottom, then covered with veggies in order of what takes longest to least longest to cook, topped with broth, water, or even a coke if you're feeling it.  Then it's cooked for hours without stirring.

I chose lamb neck for my meat potjie, but after calling several butchers I realized there is no lamb neck in Seattle.  So I decide to go with whatever is at the store, and ended up with some chicken drumsticks.  If there's anything I learned about potjies in my research it's that Namibians use whatever is on hand or in season.  So I didn't feel bad about adjusting the ingredients as needed.

I start cooking around noon and get my two potjies going.  The veggie one cooks easily, but my meat one is just not going anywhere.  When I got to Jenny's it was clear that this was a problem, so I pulled the pot out of the crockpot and put it in the oven.  Worked like a charm!

Jenny and amber finish their dishes, as some of our guest make us some "Namibian" martinis.  Jenny got real, real excited when she added the peanut butter to her soup.

Everyone was getting antsy, so to waste the last minute we did some planks, followed by some down dog.

I was nervous about my dish since I hadn't stirred it and had no idea how the bottom layers were doing.  When we finally served it was awesome.  The chicken was fall off the bone tender, and it all tasted a-okay.  We even started talking about cooking a potjie in an actual potjie cast iron pot at our next camping trip.

The evening ended with Cards Against Humanity, which lead to shenanigans and somersaults.  Yes, I said somersaults.

(Celebrated April 21st, 2018)