More on the Food Party

There was a good article in the Express today (but strangely, not on the Express's web page) about Presidential Election Foods, but my question still lies somewhat unanswered.

Not that you haven't helped. Yes, smoked salmon would be similarly good for Sarah Palin, even if the Sherbs is opposed to fish. Blini or blintzes would be tasty. And I could just get a Snyder's of Hanover bag and give up on Biden.

But I want to be extra-clever. If I had a million dollars for this party, I'd make a $150,000 dish to represent Sarah Palin (it would be even better if I could use $150,000 of the RNC's dollars). I'd love to have a Biden dish which would be significantly tested in its first hour after presentation, and won't be popular with the general public.

Still mulling my options for clever foods; if you think you've got a good one, let me know.

Election Party!

So, the Sherbs and I are planning an election results-watching party. I want the party to have election-themed foods, but I have some difficulty with foods related to the vice presidential candidates.

My tentative munchies menu is as follows:

1. Obama-themed food: Vegetarian "Hawaiian" pizza - pizza with fake ham and pineapple. Combines Obama's Hawaiian and Chicago heritage, plus those doubts that pineapple on pizza is "real" pizza are equivalent to some critics' take on Obama's ethnicity.
2. McCain-themed food: Vietnamese spring rolls. There was a really tasty-looking recipe in Vegetarian Times, and McCain does occasionally mention that he spent some time in Vietnam.
   
3. Palin-themed food: Baked Alaska (maybe). Baked Alaska is kind of hard to make, plus it's a little lazy. I may do a chocolate mousse instead, but that's merely a pun, and not very clever. I did a search on Russian snacks, for an "I can see Russian snacks from here" joke, but most Russian snacks involve foods that make the Sherbs gag, like salted fish or fish eggs.
4. Biden-themed food: California rolls (maybe). Neither Scranton nor Wilmington has a famous local food. Delaware sort of has crab, so we could do imitation crabmeat, but no one really wants to eat that as is. So, California rolls.

If anyone has better VP foods in mind, let us know.

Things I Learned This Week

1. Hamburger Helper made with textured vegetable protein is edible, but not tasty, when warm. It is inedible cold.
2. An iPod touch cannot be operated with one's hands when one is wearing fleecy gloves. It can be operated by nose touch, but with iffy accuracy. Also, you look stupid.
3. I think the slow cooker bread pudding recipe was only fair; we'll make the stuffing with faux sausage again, though.
   

Autumn Dinner

I'll spare you the excuses for not posting. Especially since I don't have any. However, The Pedant and I are back with a vengeance! Mwahaha!!

Starting off with a weekend of eating well. We, like oh so many, have decided to pinch some pennies and try eating out less. Our goal is to go to fewer restaurants but when we do go out, we'll eat only at top notch establishments and spend wisely. No shlock for us!! So, Friday I happened to be off from work and decided to make a nice meal for TP. (I also made bran muffins, ala Mark Bittman. Quite tasty!). Speaking of Bittman, I took a hint from his menus for "Autumn Dinners" and made a 3-course meal for us (oo-la-la! But also: leftovers!)

The Menu:

French Potato and Leek Soup
Spicy Autumn Burgers
Caramelized Onion Chutney
Whole Wheat Couscous
Apple Crumble

The soup was a Weight Watchers recipe that I'd made before and was nice and thick and warm and tasty. I slipped with the fake chicken soup and it's a bit salty for my tastes, but it's so good I don't mind too much.

The burgers, made with kale, white beans, sweet potatoes, panko and spices, were lightly (like a total of 2 tablespoons EVOO for 8 patties) fried and really good. It was a Bittman recipe and he suggested (in the menu, from which I stole the soup and apple crumble from too) to serve it with the caramelized onion chutney and millet mash (hence couscous) and was really great. It was sweet and spicy.

The chutney was super easy to make and the perfect opportunity to try out our new food processor. It gave a lot of extra flavor to the burgers.

The dessert, a WW recipe for apple crumble, was good but not fantastic. First, you are to bake the apples with some splenda and cinnamon in the oven for like 10 minutes. Then, you take some rolled oats, egg whites, splenda, and cinnamon and roll it out thinly on a baking sheet and "toast" for 2 minutes in a hot oven. The apple part was tasty - very autumn-y and soft, but I didn't roll out the crumble topping enough and it was clumpy and hard. However, very low calorie and really good. We even ate on our balcony - perfect for DC fall weather!