Southern Food Night!

is southern food supposed to be yellow? i'd say 90% of our southern dishes were, in fact, all yellow.

(before i continue, i apologize for being so terrible at timely updates. for some reason i like to reflect on EFNs months after they happen)

in any case: southern food night! but wait, is "southern" an ethnicity? interesting you should ask. i don't care to find out at the moment. instead, "ethnic food night" has been temporarily changed to "themed food night" or "geographically-based food night." and it might change again, bitches.

southern food night! ho'con's and blonde's! (soon to be blonde's, ten's and wheelah's!)

drinks: mint julep comes to mind. arnold palmers with alcohol. other things with whiskey. (please note the "Hard Times" brand whiskey below. how did we get such a classy group of people in one place?)

we started off with some of claire's delicious popovers. i think we decided that they weren't exactly southern, but that didnt make them any less desirable. the popovers were so good, in fact, that i had trouble stuffing myself with other food later = always a problem.

After the popovers, food began rapidly appearing on the table. Now, on to the montage of yellow:

above you'll find ten's/paula deen's bread puddin and green bean casserole. total butter: 10 sticks.

just below the casserole wheelah's/gladys knight's mac and cheese. calories per serving: c'mon it's southern food night. we can't be thinking about that.

at this point in my blog, i believe i have realized the limitations of the blogger tool. i can't put any more pictures in this thing.

verbal recap: lbj's shrimp and grits were the hit of the night. kat and jazz's tales of buying a whole catfish from the asian food market and butchering it their cheap-selves provided us with some stomach-churning humor. ktodd and hocon marveled on the dessert front. fist claimed to help, but in actuality didn't do shit.

ethnic food nights continue to replicate ancient roman feasts - too many libations and a case of the food babies. so, let's do it again! next up? perhaps a return to a more literal ethnic food night? perhaps on to the much-talked about "iron chef night"? perhaps another ethnic food night to go?

until next time!

Ethnic Food Night on the Town!

Greek!

"You know, the root of the word Miller is a Greek word. Miller come from the Greek word "milo," which is mean "apple," so there you go. As many of you know, our name, Portokalos, is come from the Greek word "portokali," which mean "orange." So, okay? Here tonight, we have, ah, apple and orange. We all different, but in the end, we all fruit. " - My Big Fat Greek Wedding

So a bunch of fruits walk into a Greek restaurant...

Ikaros! Highlandtown! Greek food! Waiters and waitresses that watch your every mover and make you feel uncomfortable! B-G's!

Donk, LBJ, Fist, and Lover Cindy all made appearances at the first ever "Ethnic Food Night on the Town!" (more to come). We opted for Greek and took our pretty behinds to Ikaros in Baltimore's small Greek neighborhood on the east si-ide.

We started with some fancy cocktails, then got three appetizers: grape leaf rolls, tzaziki, and saganaki. The grape leaves were delish, with some meats and rice on the inside and lemon sauce on the outside. Tzaziki was delicious and went with everything, including french fries later on.



Saganaki was a show! Saganaki is a block of hard, sharp Greek cheese that is drenched in alcohol, lit on fire, and put out with lemon juice. There was a lot of alcohol on this Greek cheese, which, unfortunately, we could still taste after the flame was put out. But it was pretty good nonetheless. If you look closely in the pic below, you can see the flame!


Then, we had our meals. Mostly lamb, a little seafood and mystery meat mixed in:




We were stuffed and had no interest in dessert, but the ever-present waitstaff decided to bring us some dessert on the house. I guess we had room left, because we decided to dive in before even thinking about taking a picture. Eventually, I was reminded to get a pic in, so below you see a shredded wheat concoction, baklava, and something delicious that sparked a discussion of flan.

Almost more memorable than the food, though, was the creepy and overbearing waitstaff. When Donks decided that she didnt want to box up every last morsel of her food, they descended like hawks asking what was wrong and practically forcing it on her! We took the hint and just boxed everything up and smiled. Ah! Jewish mother syndrome. Until next time...

Thai Night - 1st Official Ethnic Food Night

This happened I believe sometime within February in White Marsh, MD. It was the first official gathering pending interest from the Ethiopian food night that had occured the week before. The menu revolved around both chicken and tofu pad thai, a spicy fish soup as made by Wheeler, drinks provided by Donkey and LBJ.

Dessert was comprised of sticky rice and mango as made by Ho'Connor.

Japanese Night

This happened some time in March. Always the classy Jew, I found a 50% off sushi kit at Wegman's, which included everything: bamboo roller, soy sauce, rice vinegar, ginger, wasabi, and sushi rice. It was quite the bargain. For sushi roll ingredients, we had: smoked salmon, cucumber, crab stick, cream cheese, avocado, and asparagus. Lots of experimenting and taste-testing later, Blonde and I created this beautiful masterpiece:

And we proceeded to eat it all without anyone knowing! Till was masterful and instrumental in helping to produce perfect sushi rice thanks to her rice cooker. LBJ, Ten, and Donkey did a great job of serving up sake bombs and allowing us to sample a few varieties of sake. Fist and Lover Cindy brought over key items like extra seaweed wraps, chopsticks, and green tea ice cream. Ho'Con was in charge of the apps - including edamame dip and tempura (sooo goood). In the end, Ho'Con, Fist, and I had a little fun with the tempura batter and hot oil. We fried anything we could get our hands on, including: bananas, pickles, cheese, hotdogs, swedish fish, and nutter butters. My favorite part of the night was when Fist insisted that we could make fried ice cream the same way. She proceeded to pull out the green tea ice cream, drop it in the tempura batter, dip it into the hot oil, and allow it to melt away. Gross. More pictures and more fun next time.

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