Have cooking parties

Takeout parties are fun too. When I visited NYC I wanted to go to Momofuku and try the pork butt, but it turned out that they were closed on the day I wanted to go because it happened to be Super Bowl Sunday. Fortunately they were doing special Super Bowl pork butt catering so we could get our butt anyway. So my sister and her boyfriend, a bunch of my friends from college, and people who I met in Seattle and who subsequently moved to NYC all had a Super Bowl watching (but mostly pork eating) party.

(some trivia: pork butt comes from the pig’s shoulder. ham comes from the pig’s butt)

I had to run out to the store to get a few last minute things, at the same time that a couple of my friends showed up. I left the door unlocked, but my door sticks so they were waiting outside with only a pot of soup to keep them warm. Meanwhile, the yeast that had been proofing for 2 hours (supposed to be 10 minutes) had started to crawl out of its bowl.

Once we got inside, they graciously accepted the raw pork and raw shrimp dismantling challenge (and the vegetable shredding challenge for the non-raw-meat-toucher). Once everyone got there, it got kind of out of control (the best kind of cooking party, I think!) - chicken feet and pork bits and flour everywhere - frying and broiling and steaming in the kitchen, dough rolling, dumpling wrapping and egg custard tart baking on the dining table.

Everything mostly turned out well. I think next time I need to be more on top of the dishes situation :)

A couple of my friends were cooking dinner and invited me over. It was a lot of fun, and I realized that I love being asked over for dinner, especially to help cook (even supposedly small things like slicing mushrooms), it’s very flattering. And of course it’s great that there’s no stress about planning, inviting, etc.

Bring homemade cookies! A bunch of friends were gathering at Barca to celebrate the weekend before Christmas, and Nikki had the great idea to make cookies and bring them along. We made a double batch of chocolate chip cherry oatmeal cookies (slightly modified recipe from Joy of Cooking). We were making little mini cookies then got tired of shaping them all so the last one was a giant heart shape.

I was planning to host the CFY (Community for Youth) family group (6 adult mentors and 6 high school students) at my place and cook dinner for everyone. There was a big wind storm forecast so during the day we decided to move the party to another mentor, Kevin’s house in West Seattle, since most of the group lived on that side of the bridge. So I packed three boxes of ingredients and cooking equipment and hauled it over there. When Kevin and I got there, we discovered that the power was out at his place. Fortunately he had a gas stove, so we could actually cook, but we had to dispatch Jan to go buy a lighter (and candles…) so we could light it manually. We never did figure out how to light the oven. Everyone helped out, hacking squash and slicing apples by candlelight. The salmon black bean soup and the collard greens turned out well, and the potato wedges and acorn squash that were supposed to be roasted were ok steam/pan-fried. The stovetop baked cornbread was mostly edible too, as long as you ignored the “crispy” layer on the bottom (maybe we should have made corn pancakes instead). I cooked by headlamp and we ate sitting around the gas fireplace in the living room—just like camping.

I hosted a food free for all last week. I asked a bunch of people to bring over some raw ingredients, and we all transformed them into food. We had purple smashed pesto potatoes, spam and eggs, mango tofu, PBR steak, braised greens, walnut swimming rama squash and squash tendrils, and fruit salad with canned whipped cream. People were surprised that it was actually edible…

I learned that my kitchen has a maximum capacity of about 6. And I need to watch out for people turning the knobs of my mysterious gas stove the wrong way (it has a pilot light and the knob is unmarked and arranged Off-Light-High-Low, so it’s easy to turn it to Low instead of Off).

Then we played scrabble!

Cook Club cooking parties are a great way to learn about cooking while having fun..the cooking classes are in your home, with a talented professional chef.
Check it out:
www.cookclubparties.com

I like to cook, and I would like to spend more time with friends and generally make more friends. So a cooking party sounds good to me!
Will have to think about the steps I need to take to make it happen :-)

December 8th…only question is what Kind of food are we cooking??

alright, alright….this has to be done. Name the date and we’ll go from there!