Vietnam(-nom-nom-nom)

Vietnam joined the UN September 20th 1977.

Let's be honest.  There are HIGH expectations for this one.

The last dinner left me ready to bake, so when I found the recipe for Vietnamese mooncakes I was sold.  Who cares if they are traditionally eaten during the mid-Autumn festival?

I found a couple of delicious looking recipes, but upon further examination I noted that NONE of them were complete.  Listed ingredients that are never used, ingredients in the instructions that are not specified in type or quantity, incorrect ingredient types.  This is where I like to use the family secret my grandmother likes to call the "ah peuff" method (aka "winging it").

I got 90% done before I left to pick up my cousin.  We were driving to Tacoma for this one.  When I got there I was expecting to find the usual cooking frenzy, but instead everyone was just sitting around drinking wine.  Well, okay, not what I was expecting, but I could get into it.

Marine and I wrap up what we need to get done, and got out of the way.  Jenny and Amber finish up their combined dish.  Travis, who finished cooking much earlier in the day, admits that he's been eating his dish all day.  All the while 3 rambunctious dogs chased the reflecting lights off of every phone, watch, you name it.  Worse than cats.

THE FOOD WAS SO GOOD.  I mean, I admit we usually say that the meal that is in our mouths is the best one yet, but this time it was true.  We filled our plates and paused to take our group photo, but before Jenny to take second one most of us had already given up on smiling and were already focusing on eating.

The food was so good, it brought tears to Jenny's eyes.  Literally.  (She had to cough, but couldn't since her mouth was full, so started crying from the strain.)  I would have taken a photo but I would had to have stopped eating for that so...

The entire time I was so happy because I knew I would be taking leftovers home.  Which, by the way, I'm eating as I write these words.

Somehow everyone refrained from filling their plates with seconds.  I like to think it was because everyone was eyeing those beautiful mooncakes that have been sitting on the counter all through dinner.  I think the below picture conveys this idea really well.

(Celebrated April 13, 2019)

Solomon Islands (Hanging out in flavor town)

Solomon Islands joined the UN September 19, 1978.

This dinner was scheduled the day after I got home from being in Europe for a week and a half.  I strategically chose the easiest recipe I could find so that I didn't over commit to something I would not be able to achieve in my jet lag.  Poi!  2 ingredients: Taro, and water.  Here's hoping someone else cooks something with a little more texture and flavor so we don't have a repeat of the Marshall Islands baby food incident.

Mike and Melissa's place smells great when I get to their place, and it only got better.  Since I had already made my dish I got to drink some wine while I sat and watched all the activity.  Which included Jenny being too aggressive squeezing limes and accidentally dropping one into her GIANT vat of soup.

How many people does it take to open a can of coconut milk?

We of course had many different conversations while we waited for dinner to be ready.  Conversations at this dinner party was particularly interesting.  I won't go into too much detail, but they included duck reproduction, getting high on nutmeg, and nude bars.  Very stimulating.

Good news!  It was not a baby food dinner, and someone even described it as "taking a trip to flavor town".  I had watched several spicy peppers get added to several dishes, but luckily everything I tried was totally fine.

The Poi tasted exactly like it looked.  Grey, boring, bland,  But to be honest, I wasn't expecting much.  It seemed the biggest fan wasn't sitting at the table, but standing under it.  Mike and Melissa's dog couldn't seem to get enough.  She was also one of the few takers when it came time to fill up on leftovers.

(Celebrated March 24th, 2019)

Saint Lucia & Dominica (These figs are bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S)

Saint Lucia joined the UN on September 18, 1979.  Dominica (NOT to be confused with the Dominican Republic) joined exactly 9 months earlier on December 18, 1978.

When we were first choosing recipes, Jenny claimed rice and beans, and one of my top choices was Green "Fig" Salad.  When Jenny realized that her recipe came from the Dominican Republic, I made the mistake of mentioning the fact that "fig" doesn't really mean fig, and instead they are green bananas, and how there was salad that you boiled them for.  She ended up taking that recipe.  As I continued looking I can across a recipe for a black bean soup with rice, so in the end, we sort of ended up cooking each others recipes.  How neat is that?

I got all my items done ahead of time, inducing an avocado daiquiri that ended up spending too much time in the freezer and became more like an avocado sorbet.  Left me a lot of time to watch Jenny boil some bananas with fascination.

Dinner was delicious, as usual.

Our dinner ended like most did, with card games and Drawful.

(Celebrated January 19th, 2019)

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)