Sunday Family Dinner

• Romaine salad with pistachios and feta
  
• Grille-roasted peppered pork tenderloin
• Peanut hot sauce
• Bourbon and butter mashed sweet potatoes
• Sauteed green beans in soy sauce, ginger and garlic (ala China Pagoda)
  
• Boysenberry filled white layer cake with buttercream frosting

Attendees: Brian, Robin, BY, TS, SC, TK, DP, MR, MiS, SD, RS(1), RS, SW, MM, (WE MISS YOU MS!!!!)

Everett's came through again on the meat. When we arrived, having already decided on the pork tenderloins, our eyes searched the meat case frantically as we didn't see any pork tenderloins. The guy who was helping us, while nice enough, wasn't Our Guy. He just sort of told us they were out. We looked at him in disbelief. He said that he unpacked the truck (or maybe the freezer) so he'd know and they're out. We continued to look on in disbelief. After a few minutes of this, the Older Guy (the one who told us how to simmer the corned beef perfectly) asked what we were looking for. After conveying our pork tenderloin needs, he nonchalantly told us he'd have someone cut 'em fresh.

"How much you need?"

"Six pounds."

"Okay-doke."

Five minutes later we had our pile of pork. Fresh.

I had grille-roasted tenderloins before, out at Festival, but that had really been a happy accident. I was a bit nervous about grilling seven tenderloins simultaneously, but thanks to the Big Honkin' Grille, there was plenty of room. My technique was flawless, even if I do say so myself, and everyone seemed to love the meat.

We have temporarily misplaced our peanut sauce recipe, so we had to improvise. The recipe is better. Gotta find that damn card. The pistachios and feta made the salad nice and tangy-crunchy. We reused the mashed sweet potato recipe from Thanksgiving, and those turned out very nicely. Our green beans were a bit more crunchy than China Pagoda's, but that's quite ok.

The cake, the cake, the cake. I could go on at length about the cake. The boysenberries, the butter cream frosting, the sweet sponginess, mmm... But I don't want to make you jealous.

As for the rest of the day, my own memory is being clouded by the beautiful weather. It was so nice to be able to sit on the deck for extended periods of time without freezing to death. Of course the warmer weather also meant we couldn't chill the ciders on the back porch, but that's the price you pay. I'm looking forward to Sunday evening cigar smoking...

# posted by BrianGee @ 8:27 PM

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