Meat Without Flame

Chicken kabobs last night on the George Foreman outdoor grill. We used some Soy Vay wasabi teriyaki for marinade. Other ingredients included pineapple, onion, mushroom, and green bell pepper.

I'm still getting the hang of grilling on the Foreman outdoor grill; it doesn't have the same sensation as over a flame, and requires the cover for most of the cooking, so I feel like I have to guess how long it needs to be on before a turn. Regardless, it was tasty.

Party Aftermath

Okay, time to take the bumper magnet off the car; election's over, don't need people to know who I voted for through Christmas.

Sadly, The Sherbs did not become a member of the Arlington County School Board, even though I wrote her in; she was outvoted by 30,000 and 40,000 votes, respectively, by the two incumbents (and only people on the ballot). Maybe next time.

As for the party itself, the foods worked out. The pizza was very tasty, mostly thanks to Costco - adding Dole pineapple chunks and fake ham didn't ruin it, although the cheese didn't get as brown as I would have liked. The Vietnamese rolls were pretty good, although not as good as party food as I'd have hoped; rice paper is not a tortilla, it sort of sticks and stretches as you eat it, so you really need a fork. Wegman's makes great honey roasted peanuts.

I drank a bottle of Brooklyn Brewery's Black Chocolate Stout, which is sort of a Presidential election tradition for me. It is my favorite chocolate-flavored beer.

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.

Be my Netflix buddy!

I'm trying to get everyone I know with Netflix to become my Netflix buddy, in part so I can engage in a voyeuristic look at other people's media consumption, and also to see if there are any movies on my queue that I should skip.

Speaking of which, I saw the first three episodes of All Creatures Great and Small with the Sherbs last night thanks to Netflix. It was adorable and we will watch more of it, but I won't give you the heartfelt review here. Instead, I will satirically summarize it as follows:

The Fifth Doctor infiltrates a rural veterinary clinic as a drunken layabout in order to keep in check the mercy-killing impulses of recent veterinary-school grad James "The Angel of Death" Herriot, a man who finds fatal ailments requiring euthanasia in every third animal he treats. Meanwhile a blond version of John Steed from The Avengers pretends to be a veterinarian but in fact treats as few animals as he possibly can.

In other news, my new favorite flavor of Harris Teeter brand light yogurt is Piña Colada. The Sherbs and I have been visiting "the Teet" regularly as there's one that keeps giving us $5 coupons, plus their fat-free, low-sugar yogurt was 33¢ with my "frequent Teeters" card (not in fact what it's called). The yogurt has little bits of coconut and pineapple in it, which make the aspartame in the mix a lot less cloying.

Passover - The Holiday of Odd Food

So, I'm fasting in advance of Passover (being a firstborn and all), and thinking about food, because that's what you do when you fast. I think about food more when fasting than I do when I actually need to think about food, like when grocery shopping.

Anyway, there was a recipe in the print edition of the Washington Jewish Week for a "Tropical Tiramisu" for Passover. Its relation to real tiramisu is tenuous, but it's pineapple, mango, sponge cake, and flavored liquor. And we're pretty desperate for foods on Passover.

Maybe I'll try it.