Category: Food

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Party Season

The winter doldrums can be fought with lots of parties. At least, that’s the logic we’re going with around here. People are itching for an excuse to get out of the house and be around people. So we have parties scheduled for one reason or another just about every weekend through the end of February, and then the weather gets nicer in March and we can get start heading outdoors again.

Of course the motherload of parties will be the Super Bowl party in two weeks. That is an event unto itself and the competition for holding the biggest and best gets higher stakes each year. Personally, there might be a few of my friends hosting Super Bowl parties that I’d like to attend, but I’m going to the boss’s house for his party. At least the food and beverage will be top shelf and he has a 52 inch HD plasma screen to watch the game – and commercials.

I want to throw a dinner party the following weekend for about 10 people. The web site www.celebrations.com has some nice ideas for choosing a dinner party theme and then building the party around that, with invitations, decorations, menu items, etc. With all of their dinner party ideas it’s almost like dinner in a box, but you provide the food!

The last dinner party I threw was an Italian theme to celebrate the final episode of the Sopranos. It was so much fun but it was a sad occasion. I miss the Sopranos and it broke my heart to see the show end, but it was a great night with lots of authentic Italian food. If I had known about the Celebrations web site back then, I might have kicked up the decorations a few notches. So I’ll cruise the site and find some new ideas for my party on the seventh.

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Donuts for Breakfast

There are plenty of branded donuts to choose from when you want to have donuts for breakfast. The grocery stores caryy Hostess, Entenman, Little Debbie, and their own bakery produced selections. There are also specialty bakery stores, such as Krispy Kreme and Dunkin Donuts.

Personally, my favorite donut bakery is the Shipley Donuts. There are only a handful of those stores around town, and none of them are on the normal route to my office. So if I want to pick up some donuts on the way to the office, I either go out of my way 15 minutes to the bakery and then get stuck in traffic on the way back or I go by the one Krispy Kreme store that is on the commute route.

I like Shipley enough that I would be willing to go by there on my way home and keep the donuts overnight for presentation the next morning. That’s not as good as freshly baked, but at least they have the full flavor of the Shipley recipes. But the Shipley stores close down mid afternoon, and the best donuts are sold out each morning to customers who drive over in the morning and get first choice. So I am resigned to only having Shipley donuts once in a blue moon and when I get the ocassional urge to treat the office with donuts, they will just get the convenient Krispy Kreme glazed.

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The Dinner Hour

As a kid we were encouraged to go outside and play every day after we returned home from a day of school. Most days, except in the dead of winter for about a month, we had at least an hour or two of daylight to play in the yard or with friends in the neighborhood. But at six o’clock, we were all expected to be home, cleaned up, and ready to eat dinner.

Everyone in our upper middle class neighborhood was expected to eat dinner at six o’clock except for my friend, Sandy. That family was headed by an Army General, and he required dinner at five o’clock. I suspect that a good part of that is because he had to start his day earlier than the white collar dads who had 9 to 5 jobs. The military runs on its own time, and the General leads by good example.

As an adult in today’s world, I almost never get to eat dinner by six o’clock. Most nights I don’t even get home from work until after six. My dinner has been pushed back to seven o’clock most nights. I wonder if the kids from the ‘hood are finding the same thing happening in their lives, or if they have been able to stick to the six o’clock hour for their dinners now?

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Blueberry Muffins

Does anybody NOT like blueberry muffins? I think this is one food that is universally loved by everyone.

I used to pick blueberries from the bushes in the backyard of my first grade teacher. She had about a dozen blueberry bushes and would invite the kids to come pick as many as they wanted for free on the weekend of the fourth of July every year. The rest of the summer you could still come pick them, but she would charge $2 per pail.

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Cold Fries

What is it about french fries that makes them turn into little rocks of stuff that you can barely swallow when they get cold? I mean, lots of foods taste OK after they’ve gotten cold.  Some things even taste better, like meatloaf. I love a cold meatloaf sandwich. You put a thick slice on white bread, a little mayo and a couple leafs of lettuce, a slice of fresh tomato – if they are in season. Awesome sandwich. But the cold french fries – even my dog won’t eat them cold.

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O’Charley’s Curbside To Go

Tonight I had nothing in the house worth cooking and I was starved, so I decided to call O’Charleys and order my dinner from their menu of great American foods. They have a fantastic prime rib dinner only on the weekends, so I decided to take advantage of the availability and order a prime rib dinner with baked potato and garden salad. Every dinner also comes with their famous and delicious soft yeast rolls. The rolls melt in your mouth and come with their special honey butter.

The phone was answered on the second ring and the server took my order let me know that it would be ready and waiting for me in 15 minutes. I waited about 10 minutes before heading out in the car, as it only takes 5 minutes to get to their closest restaurant location. When I pulled up to their special marked “Curbside To Go” parking spot, a server came up to my car immediatelt with my dinner, nicely packaged and ready to carry home. What a great experience and worth every penny of the $20, including a nice tip.

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Labor Day Celebration

Everyone at the radio station wanted to do something to celebrate Labor Day, so we planned a group picnic at the Lake. We reserved a paviliion at the state park and the radio station agreed to ante up for everyone’s parking fee, which surprised the hell out of all of us. The Station Manager’s secretary passed around a sign up sheet for the potluck food. We think about 20 people from the station will show up at some point during the day, along with spouses, girlfriends, and a few kids. So we are planning on feeding 50-60 people altogether.

For some reason, Tony and I got volunteered to cook the hamburgers and hotdogs, so we have to get there a little early and fire up the big grill. That’s fine by me – I can cook anything on a grill and have a secret seasoning mix to put in the hamburger meat that will give it a little kick and extra flavor. So I went to Food Lion last night and bought 20 pounds of ground chuck and made up the burgers. Tony’s dealing with the hot dogs and the charcoal.

I’m concerned that my snow white legs sticking out from my bathing suit trunks are going to scare small children. I haven’t been to the beach even once this whole summer and have absolutely no tan. But that’s what happens when you work the night shift – you get so pale you practically glow in the dark. But then again, my skinny white legs won’t be the only ones in the crowd.

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Remember Shakey’s Pizza Parlours?

Shakey’s used to have pizza parlours all over the country. Where I lived in the Washington DC area there were a couple dozen, back in the 60’s – 80’s. Sometime in the late 1980’s they started closing their restaurants. I don’t know why. They were really popular with families because they had a great variety of pizzas on a buffet and everyone could eat as much as they wanted of their favorite toppings. Plus they had great music entertainment at night, with rag time or dixie bands playing songs that everyone knew and could sing along.

Entire baseball and softball teams would come in to their closest Shakey’s after a game and eat pizza, drink beer or soda and have a lot of fun. We had our baseball team party at Shakey’s every year.

There’s nothing like them around here any more. Miss them and the great family entertainment.

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Sobe Sayings

What is the deal with all these weird sayings printed on the inside of the bottle caps on Sobe drinks? The new version of fortune cookies?

I can’t pay top dollar at the convenience stores for a bottle of flavored water. At the local Dailey’s stores, the Sobe drinks are $2 and sometimes $2.29 for just one bottle. But they do go on sale every once in a while at the local grocery, so when they are featured “10 bottles for $10” I will stock up.

This week I’ve enjoyed two bottles of the Sobe green tea. It’s an acquired taste but now I’m hooked. I also like the citrus and the Nirvana flavors.

Under the bottle cap of the first one it says, “Scorch Muffins.” WTF is that? A band? Instructions?

Under the bottle cap of the second one it says, “You’re kind of a big deal.” Well, YEAH!

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English Muffins

As a kid we had English Muffins in the pantry just about any given day of the week. It was a staple that we bought every week at the grocery store.They couldn’t be just ANY English Muffins – they had to be Thomas’ English Muffins. The ones with the “nooks and crannies” for the melting butter to run down and pool up in little delicious butter puddles for each bite.

The English Muffins are much more than a breakfast bread. I eat them in the afternoon as a snack, with a coating of peanut butter on top that melts down into the nooks and crannies and makes each bite a smooth delicious mix of muffin and sweet peanut butter.

Sometimes we use English Muffins in place of hamburger buns . . . gives a grilled burger and your favorite toppings a whole new take on delicious.