We’ve started a tradition of having an approximately weekly “family” style dinner at my apartment where someone makes dinner for everyone to enjoy. There are four people in my house (Megan, Filip, Gal, and myself), plus we usually invite one or two others over for the event. It is great to let someone else cook dinner for a night, and it is nice to have an excuse to take a break, drink some wine, and enjoy some good food.

Dinner #0 – Megan’s Lasagna

While technically the full “family” wasn’t there, Megan, Gal, Ashmita and I had a nice lasagna dinner one weekend when Filip was away at the start of the semester. It was Megan’s first time as head chef making lasagna (I helped). Not surprisingly, it turned out quite well and the three of us managed to stuff ourselves with so much of it that we had about half as many leftovers as I had originally anticipated. Sadly, there were no pictures to commemorate the event.

Dinner #1 – Gal’s Meat

To start us off, Gal made a pasta and meat sauce dish. Shiraj joined us and we quickly consumed all of the food and probably all of the wine, although I can’t quite remember (which I guess just increases that probability). We also played with Gal’s prisms to take some crazy pictures. Hooray physics!

Dinner #2 – Filip’s Lead Bricks

Filip was second at bat about a week later. We celebrated turning in our first Algorithms homework with some traditional polish cuisine. It was a hefty meal consisting of a tomato salad, red potatoes, schnitzel style pork chops, and polish sausage. Everything was delicious, and definitely only slightly less filling than eating cannon balls (but much, much tastier). After dinner Gal introduced us to the British comedy Black Books, which I highly recommend.

Dinner #3 – Megan’s Pie

Next up Megan and I made shepherd’s pie. Yariv joined us as special guest and we started with a toast of white wine mixed with Creme de Cassis. Gal had gotten the red currant liquor from his parents and it added a nice sweet, fruity flavor to the wine. Yariv also brought a bottle of Campo Viejo Rioja which was an excellent red wine (although it may have caused Megan’s headache later). The five of us polished off quite a bit of meat, potatoes, vegetables, and wine. There may have even been apple pie. After dinner we played the card game Killer Bunnies which brought out a lot of good laughs.

Dinner #4 – My Thai

Our fourth dinner was to celebrate Shiraj’s birthday. About two hours before the event we realized that we ought to make some food, so I offered to cook some Thai food since I had planned that for our next dinner. Plans were slightly complicated since one of our guests was kosher so we needed a vegetarian dish. Being typically over-ambitious in my cooking plans I decided to do both a coconut curry and a stir fry dish. The curry was just vegetables, but I cooked up some optional chicken so that the meat eaters wouldn’t be too shy to try it. The second dish was Thai Basil Beef and it came out very well. In addition to the usual suspects, we had Shiraj, Ashmita, and Avigail over. I was a bit late getting the food finished, but we started on the bread and wine early and had a great time. We learned some Hebrew and Polish, got our hands tied up trying to touch our noses, and an assortment of other craziness.

Dinner #5 – Gal’s Falafel Balls

To continue the ethnic food trend, Gal made falafel and home made pitas. We stuffed the pitas with falafel, tomato and cucumber salad, and french fries which Filip made. All together it was really good, and I will be much less intimidated from ordering falafel in the future now. The fresh pitas were a completely different class than the hard dry ones you normally get at a store.