I just finished reading Richard Russo’s Straight Man, a hilarious story of an extremely dysfunctional academic department. Over the course of a long weekend, the narrator, William Henry Devereaux , Jr, manages to be charged as a duck murdering terrorist, cry for joy from wetting his pants, and (almost) play in a donkey basketball game. While the storyline alone is comical enough, it is told with a sarcastic humor that shows up even when the tale turns more serious to deal with relationships both between parents and children and husbands and wives. Read more »

On my dinner night I made two spanish dishes for Megan and Filip. The first was Patatas Bravas, the quintessential spanish appetizer of fried potatoes in a spicy sauce. This was accompanied by grilled pork on a stick, marinated in a mix of Spanish and Arabic spices.

I had made Patatas Bravas twice over the summer with a different recipe which had a separate, mayonnaise based sauce. The new recipe instead had you cook up the potatoes in spices and hot peppers, which was good, but I don’t think my sauce to potato ratio was quite right. I also had trouble getting the potatoes to brown while frying… I think in the past I’ve had better luck using vegetable oil rather than olive oil.

The second dish of grilled (actually broiled) pork skewers were marinated in a nice mix of coriander and cumin seeds, garlic, and paprika. Just like the potatoes, I’d like to try these again, but make more sauce and marinate the meat for longer.

I need a bit more practice before I can compete with some of the tapas places we visited on our trip to spain last spring, but it was still pretty good. Having the food with Este, one of the better Spanish red wine’s I’ve tried lately ($9 at Whole Foods), didn’t hurt either.

After turning in an assignment for one of our classes, Filip, Gal and I decided that we should take the night easy and make ask Megan nicely if she would cook dinner for us. Luckily she agreed, so the rest of us went out to buy her ingredients and restock the wine cellar. She made an excellent chili with beef, black beans, tomatoes, lots of spices, and pasta shells. We were all starving, but the food was really hot, so we either dipped our bread in it or received third degree burns on our tongues (or more likely both). We had two dessert courses as well, the first was butternut squash and apples which I baked up with brown sugar, butter, and a little salt. I’m not sure how I feel about butternut squash–it didn’t have much flavor. Filip felt it grew on you, but next time I’ll try something different with it. This was followed by fruit salad. It was the first time I’d had fresh berries in a few months, so it should ward off scurvy for the time being.

After dinner we watched Prairie Home Companion (the movie) which was pretty funny, if a bit strange. They had some hilarious songs and it makes me want to listen to the full radio show again. Lately I’ve been downloading the podcasts of the show, but they only include the “News from Lake Woebegone” portion (which is arguably the best part).

Filip told me the polish word for these, but I forget what it was. I think it was only a few syllables longer than the title above. In any case, our second polish dining experience included the two standard items: breaded meat and potatoes, plus beets and salad in a creamy dressing. Traditionally the meat was supposed to be ground pork, but the closest at the supermarket was ground turkey. The meat patties were like breaded hamburgers with extra onions and yummy spices inside. As usual it was a nice hearty meal.