Sunday, August 07, 2005
30 Ears of Corn. 30!
Food:
At 28 (including Robin and myself), this was easily the largest dinner yet. It makes a certain amount of sense considering that this was the last SFD before Festival begins, and whether folks are going to be out there with us or not, everyone wanted to have one last dinner together before life goes completely kablooey. Lots of people were coming back from Glory, and I'm touched that they came here rather than going home to sleep off the week. (Touched or stupid, maybe folks just didn't want to cook for themselves. I'm sticking with touched. :) And with Robin's siblings here [AK & DW], it made for two weeks in a row with actual family at Family Dinner. Cool.
It was also the conclusion of one year of SFDs. One year of trying something different every week. One year having grown from four to six friends getting together to bake, play video games, watch DVDs, and generally relax to twenty-eight [all good] friends coming together for a weekly family reunion.
Anyway, the food. I must have forgotten everything we learned in the last year on how to get the meal out on time. If I'd stopped to think that three of the main dishes all needed to be cooked on the grille, and each of the three were going to completely fill the grille, we might have done something a little different. As it was, we ate at about 9:00, and I was still finishing the corn. Luckily most people seemed to feel it was worth the wait, either that or they were so freaking hungry that anything would have tasted fantastic.
Most of what we had, I've made at other times. So there were really no surprises or lessons learned to talk about. I did try a different method for prepping the chicken wings. I don't remember where I saw it, but I read a note on putting the wings on skewers to straighten them out. It looks really cool, like a big chicken crab claw. In theory the skewer protruding from the wing makes it easier to deal with on the grille and to eat. Well, maybe with fewer wings that may be true. Last night, all of the damn sticks poking around made it a pain to deal with. And I was actually able to fit fewer wings on the grill at once. I also think they were more difficult to eat since it was much harder to rend the parts of the wing apart to get at the meat. I don't think I'll be doing that again.
So, now that Fest begins, the next seven Sundays Robin and I will be having dinner at China Pagoda in Chaska (please join us). There will actually be more cooking during Fest with Saturday's Gate Lunch, Saturday Night Grilling, and Sunday Morning Who's Your Daddy Pancakes. Yep, talk about crazy, without a real kitchen and miles away from civilization, instead of one meal for 20+, I'll be cooking three straight meals for something like 40+. But that's a different thing entirely. I'm not entirely sure if I'll write about any of those meals, so this may be the last update here until the beginning of October. I just want to end by saying Thank You to everyone that made it to even one dinner. My friends are my life, and you have all made it the richer.
- Deviled eggs
- Chicken wings
- Choose-your-own-dressing green salad
- Olive oil and Italian seasoning soaked grilled chicken
- Fire roasted corn on the cob
- Pasta salad
- Strawberry shortcake
At 28 (including Robin and myself), this was easily the largest dinner yet. It makes a certain amount of sense considering that this was the last SFD before Festival begins, and whether folks are going to be out there with us or not, everyone wanted to have one last dinner together before life goes completely kablooey. Lots of people were coming back from Glory, and I'm touched that they came here rather than going home to sleep off the week. (Touched or stupid, maybe folks just didn't want to cook for themselves. I'm sticking with touched. :) And with Robin's siblings here [AK & DW], it made for two weeks in a row with actual family at Family Dinner. Cool.
It was also the conclusion of one year of SFDs. One year of trying something different every week. One year having grown from four to six friends getting together to bake, play video games, watch DVDs, and generally relax to twenty-eight [all good] friends coming together for a weekly family reunion.
Anyway, the food. I must have forgotten everything we learned in the last year on how to get the meal out on time. If I'd stopped to think that three of the main dishes all needed to be cooked on the grille, and each of the three were going to completely fill the grille, we might have done something a little different. As it was, we ate at about 9:00, and I was still finishing the corn. Luckily most people seemed to feel it was worth the wait, either that or they were so freaking hungry that anything would have tasted fantastic.
Most of what we had, I've made at other times. So there were really no surprises or lessons learned to talk about. I did try a different method for prepping the chicken wings. I don't remember where I saw it, but I read a note on putting the wings on skewers to straighten them out. It looks really cool, like a big chicken crab claw. In theory the skewer protruding from the wing makes it easier to deal with on the grille and to eat. Well, maybe with fewer wings that may be true. Last night, all of the damn sticks poking around made it a pain to deal with. And I was actually able to fit fewer wings on the grill at once. I also think they were more difficult to eat since it was much harder to rend the parts of the wing apart to get at the meat. I don't think I'll be doing that again.
So, now that Fest begins, the next seven Sundays Robin and I will be having dinner at China Pagoda in Chaska (please join us). There will actually be more cooking during Fest with Saturday's Gate Lunch, Saturday Night Grilling, and Sunday Morning Who's Your Daddy Pancakes. Yep, talk about crazy, without a real kitchen and miles away from civilization, instead of one meal for 20+, I'll be cooking three straight meals for something like 40+. But that's a different thing entirely. I'm not entirely sure if I'll write about any of those meals, so this may be the last update here until the beginning of October. I just want to end by saying Thank You to everyone that made it to even one dinner. My friends are my life, and you have all made it the richer.
