Roast Beast - take 2

Though we rarely repeat a TND, last year's Roast Beast while watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas has become a cult icon in our group. So with two days to prepare, we convinced Chris to make his flower pot roast again (all three words necessary in that dish's name) and divied out the potatoes, carrots, asparagus, and bread amongst the rest of us. Here's Chris carving the finished roast - which took all day to cook:

The meal was excellent, to say the least. All of our idyllic memories of last year were well-founded. We accompanied the roast with baked asparagus, two variations on roasted potatoes and carrots, and rolls. We also enjoyed some very nice wine that Eric contributed. Some wine and then some roast...never-ending double fist pump.

Oh, I would be remiss to leave out that we also had a guest at our dinner: Eric's brother Ben from Georgia. We had great dinner conversation sharing all of the interesting things Eric has said, which then turned into a retelling of all the interesting things any of us have ever said or done. We circulated through stories of mismatched shoes, national holidays in other countries, and pears.

After dinner, we revisited another memorable Christmas activity from last year: Christmas cookie decorating. Lyndee and I mixed the frosting colors while everyone else cleaned up (our evil plan worked!) and then we all set to work. Santa, beakers, business socks, reindeer, snow flakes, and Christmas trees all surfaced. There were also quite a few "abstract" cookies:) To see pictures, visit Grace's picasa album - there were too many to post.

Before the night ended, we took these group/family pictures in front of the Christmas tree. The only thing missing was my Grandma Warnock instructing my dad to stop goofing off and smile. It seems we didn't need her:

Gobble, gooble!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Twas a veritable feast...fealty for a king...le fete du siecle! The Thanksgiving Dinner prepared by TND was beautiful and bountiful: turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, green bean casserole, sweet potato bake, sweet corn, gravy, cranberry salad, rolls, apple pie, cookies, and wine - all on Ben and Grace's fine china.

Memorable moments from the evening include the gravy that "almost was not", the surprise jello shots supplied by Brad, Eric's failed attempts to avoid dishes, and cleaning up to Christmas music. Also, note for next year: though sweet potatoes and yams are often called by each other's names, the two starches are different. Go figure!

Many thanks to Lyndee for organizing the big event and cooking such a delicious turkey! Words can ill descibe its juicy goodness. Even on day three of leftovers, the meat was still sumptuous. Too bad it can never be replicated since she randomly combined three "recipes" in the typical Lyndee-fashion.

One question only remains: why in the world did we not do this before???!

Mexican Movie Night...kind of

Last Saturday night we gathered chez Newsomes for our first "Family Dinner". We enjoyed some tasty Mexican tortilla soup and 7-layer taco dip followed by Baked Alaska for dessert. Though I went through a dozen and a half eggs and ran Ben's electric bill up by $20 using the mixer, stiff peaks finally formed. Note to self, sugar to egg ratio is very important when making meringue.

After dinner, we performed an impromptu rendition of Phantom of the Opera. Though the notes were very high, the singing was zestful- despite full bellies and the late hour.

After a round of Yahtzee (during which I rolled a perfect Yahtzee with all dice facing the same direction (see picture) ... the boys spent the next 10 minutes trying to figure out the probability of my amazingness. Little do they know that perfection as found in someone such as myself can never be duplicated or calculated. It is a phenomenon that should simply be admired and loved).

Anyway, after Yahtzee, we pulled out the air mattress, donned our PJ's and settled in for the sleepover part of our evening. During our first movie, Gladiator, almost everyone fell asleep - even Eric who insisted on sleeping on the floor. Brad's involuntary foot movement probably got to him.

Sunday morning, everyone woke bright and early for a breakfast of scrumptious sausage and egg biscuits with apples on the side. I parted ways with the group to go to church (heathens, the lot of you!) while the rest went hiking in the Gorge. Someone else will have to write that post!

The next gathering is scheduled for this Saturday - Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings!

OPERATION Game Night

Operation Game Night was a big hit at Lyndee's house. We watched UK beat #1 ranked LSU in triple overtime and then played rounds of Scum, Cranium, and Trivial Pursuit. The girls won the artsy Cranium, after which the guys quickly proved their superiority in the very Trivial Pursuit. We finally mixed girls and guys and had a closer TP game. The girls played with the Photo Booth program on Brad's computer and everyone chowed down on chips and salsa, peanuts, and hot cider. Operation Game Night was a success!

CATCH this PHRASE, it'll BOGGLE your mind!

HI-HO CHERRY-O!

Katie, Grace, Ben, Brad, Megan, Chris, Chris, Eric,

I don't want to intrude upon your LIFE or put a MONOPOLY on your evening, but I would like to invite you to OPERATION Game Night at 1900 hours on Saturday the 13th. We will CONNECT FOUR all the fun at 385 Redding Road #7. No BATTLESHIPs, no WAR, but, take heed, this is no TRIVIAL PURSUIT.

Please bring your CRANIUM and a snack...I will have APPLES TO APPLES and Caramel and Katie has BANANA GRAMS. Grace has offered to BREAK THE ICE cream tub open for all us HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPOS! Please no SCRABBLEd eggs...the food theme for the night is CANDYLAND. My apartment is stocked with all the necessary eating equipment, like SPOONS, and other safety items, such as CHUTES AND LADDERS, in case of a fire, so fear no RISK. (If Katie gets our of control, we can always POKER, though in TEXAS they HOLD 'EM.) Space is limited and we couldn't invite everyone, so DON'T SPILL THE BEANS.

I hope you can come from the bottom of my HEARTS, deep in my CHESSt, and KER PLUNK yourself on my couch for an OUTBURST of BLITZing good time. If you are PUZZLEd about where i live, just give me a call, but I don't want to hear, "SORRY, I'd prefer to be SOLITAIRE tonight" or "I'd rather GO FISHing, you OLD MAID."

So do your jumping JACKS, PICK UP all your STICKS, and warm up your BINGO callin', YATZEE shouting and ENCORE singing voice. (This email should be a pretty good CLUE as to how much fun we're going to have!)

See ya then, BUCKAROOs!
Lyndee "The CASINO Queen" Mourn
321.6110

(I was not on SPEED when I wrote this.)

Faithfully transcribed by Katie on 10/23/07

Is Fall Anxious?

As superpendioso as the celebration of fall will be. Lets be careful that we do not jump the gun. at this point its supposed to be 85 next Thursday. Perhaps a celebration of the end of summer might be in order, and a bon fire at a cooler date. I will say that I for one am a HUGE advocate for bonfireing and fall festivities, as I believe it is the 2nd most blessed season, shortly behind winter. But if we get our hopes up too soon then we might jinks the onset of fall. Heaven forbid, and find ourselves miserably sweating through the next two to three months. and....

I can't make it, and I want to do the bon fire too.


Chris

Recipe: Black Forest Cherry Cake

Ingredients:
1 chocolate sponge-cake
2 table-spoons "Black Forest Kirschwasser" (Kirsch 40 Vol. %)
1 lb. 4 oz. Morello-Cherries (pie cherries), 2 oz. sugar, bring it to a boil
1 oz. corn-flour
1 pt. fresh cream
3 leaves gelatine
1 package vanille-sugar
grated chocolate

Separate cherries from juice, bring 1/2 pt. juice to the boil, add the mixed corn-flour, boil for 1 min., add cherries and the "Kirsch", let it cool down. Whip cream with sugar and vanille-sugar, add the melted gelatine.

Cut the chocolate sponge in three layers. Cover the first layer with cream and cherries, put the second layer on top, cover this one with cream and cherries too, put the third layer on top.

Cover the chole cake with cream, sprinkle with grated chocolate and garnish with cherries!

(This recipe was copied verbatim from the recipe card I saved from the Black Forest, Haus der Schwarzwalduhren, Niederwasser, Germany.)

The Transvestites

I think the night I laughed the hardest was the Thursday we gathered at Brad and Chris Dent's house for Chris's birthday party...which he incidentally missed most of.

The five of us present (Ben, Grace, Brad, Lyndee, and me, Katie) gorged ourselves on egg, bacon, and cheese sandwiches with homemade rolls and then combined all our baking know-how to make an authentic Black Forest Cherry Cake. We used the recipe that I had saved from having been in the Black Forest in 2004, but that meant all the ingredients and instructions were written for Europeans - metric and such. We followed the recipe to the letter though, relying on Google to clarify that gelatin leaves can actually be substitued with so much powder gelatin and that corn-flour is just another name for corn starch. Who knew?

The crowning feat of making the cake though was the whipped cream. Using only heavy whipping cream, a whisk and our brute strength, we formed a relay team to accomplish the feat. When one person wearied, he threw the whisk at the next person in line and then ran around the table to be in the back of the line. As the mixture became thicker, we passed the baton, er, whisk, faster and faster until we were all just running around the kitchen table. The whipped cream was made though, and the cake constructed. Here's a final picture:

If that weren't enough though, the night continued to gain hilarity. After enjoying our well-earned dessert (and singing Happy Birthday to Chris), we entered a period of...well, creativity. Someone must have decided that it would be interesting to see what the boys looked like with our long hair, so the following pictures were taken. Brandy or no, I have never laughed so hard.

Chris and Brad don Grace's long hair and Ben sports Lyndee's. It will be hard to top that night in my book!

Mexican Dipping Night

The following narration must be read in a Mexican accent:
What can I say about the best Mexican Dipping Night ever?!?!? Well, I will attempt to bring justice to the deliciousness that was that night. Our first course, and second, and third course, for that matter, consisted of various combinations of chips dipped in salsa, chips dipped in guacamole, chips dipped in queso, chips dipped in refried beans, chips dipped in roasted salsa, and chips dipped in jalapenos. (Hence the Mexican dipping night.)
My favorite was the tri-fecta combination of small chip dipped in queso, small chip dipped in guacamole, and small chip dipped in salsa and stacked on top of each other. My arms are in the air celebrating just thinking about it.
I can't believe that we still ate Katie's special Taco Pie after all that dipping!!!!
The birthday celebrations were amplified by spanish tunes played by Chris Weiss on guitar wearing a too small sombrero and Megan doing a Mexican hat dance around a too small sombrero. Also, Chris Dent made killer margaritas with sugar instead of salt!!!
The evening was definitely punctuated with a fabulous homemade 3-dimensional sombrero cake with candles aplenty for the Weiss couple. I only leave you with one question...how do you cut a cake that is a somebrero?

TND forever!

May TND live on forever! We've been saying for too long that we need to create a scrapbook to keep track of all the amazing evenings we've had at Thursday Night Dinner. This blog will capture the awesome accomplishments of those feasts - both intentional and accidental. Plus it will be available to all eight of us, any time of day, no matter where we may find ourselves in months and years to come. We can post favorite recipes, funny pictures, and recant memorable moments (like the evening we discovered Spam isn't so bad after all).

In an effort to set the stage: Thursday Night Dinners began in the winter of 2006 when the original six (Ben, Grace, Megan, Chris, Lyndee, and me) decided that bumping butts weekly while cooking in a tiny apartment kitchen and playing Dutch Blitz was exactly what we all needed. Though we have added two regulars (Brad and Chris), had guests every now and again, and even taken lengthy breaks at times, Thursday Night Dinners have maintained their abundant creativity, inquisitiveness, and craziness since the beginning. Whether we're making homemade pizzas, eating Grace's 10-pound lasagna, or creating our own random dinner out of mystery ingredients, the real specialty of TND - friends spending time together - is always the highlight. Even if Grandma Walker's potato soup recipe were lost (God forbid!), the memories would remain and the friendships would last. Here's to TND and its continued vibrancy.