For dinner last night, we went to a cafe on campus. I drew a few smiles when in desperation I just asked ‘What are those sandwiches over there?’. Today we figured out that we have to take a bus to the station and transfer from there to the one that gets us home, so we decided to eat out downtown tonight. It took us a while to find a place that actually sold food. Our first stop only sold “the drink”. I knew something was wrong at the ‘restaurant’ when the person we were ordering from told us she was a volunteer, but it wasn’t till after we paid that she told us that we were at some type of YMCA thing. Oh well, in for 50 ore, in for 5 kroner as they say. What we ended up eating were three different kinds of Smørrebrød. One was topped with liver paté and some sort of beet thing. I’ve washed my hands and still haven’t gotten the stink off. Another had slices of hard-boiled egg and something that was referred to as a curry. The last had a slice of ham topped with “Italian salad”, which my Italian colleague didn’t seem to recognize. I’ve decided to consider it an “authentic” experience.

I’ve begun to pick up bits and pieces of the language. I learned what lufthavn means before leaving the airport, but most of the words I now know are prepositions or other short words. Nothing that’s going to help me order food anytime soon. I guess there’s some talk of going out to eat with the professor here on Friday. It would be nice to have some real food.

[Joe]

Dad and I didn’t have anything planned for today, so we headed up to camp for a swim. Afterward, we went to Pulaski to try to find a place to eat. We finally settled on The RiverHouse Restaurant, which looked a good bit better than the other places in town. I got the Tuscan Chicken, which was very good. I ended up using the skin from my baked potato to soak up the sauce.
I figured that I had been bad enough with dinner, so when Dad ordered Pecan Pie, I didn’t get anything for myself. I did however try a small piece of his, which was a big mistake. I’ve always avoided Pecan Pie, because I’m not a big fan of nuts in dessert, but I’ve been trying a few new things lately and this stuff was fantastic. I was not as impressed with the bit of swordfish that I had the other day, but I was not nearly as revolted as I expected.
We went back to camp to catch the fireworks, and I’m happy to report that the south side won this year’s battle (as subjectively determined by me). There were even some people setting off some from the beach. Dad and I were standing by the edge of the water by the red fence and had a fair amount of ash land on us.
On the way home we spent the whole time checking for deer as Dad had a rather interesting experience the last time he came home from camp. He saw a deer cross the road and slowed down thinking there might be more. Instead the deer that had already crossed decided to go back across the road and jumped over Dad’s hood, hitting it’s hoof on the windshield in the process. Luckily, Dad was going slow enough, so no damage was done.

[Joe]

Even with all the fast food joints and pizza places in Oneida, I don’t know of a single place to get good chicken wings delivered from. Supposing that I could find such a place, I most likely couldn’t eat them, because of my diet. That’s why I was excited to see that in The Wing and I, Alton Brown had a recipe for baking chicken wings.

I decided to give the recipe a try tonight, so I picked up a cooling rack and some chicken wingettes at the store. AB says to get full wings and chop them up yourself, but I hate dealing with chicken, so I wimped out. As the recipe says to, I steamed the chicken wings, but I had to do it in a couple of batches because they wouldn’t all fit. I put the wings on the cooling rack but because it had some sort of non-stick coating, I wasn’t sure it would fare well in the oven. So I ended up just throwing the wings on a cookie sheet and baking them that way. This caused a bit of a problem as just a few minutes later the fire alarm went off. I couldn’t see any smoke so I just pulled the battery out, and went on cooking. For the sauce, I cut back on the butter since I didn’t think it was all that necessary. After 2+ hours of prep/cook time, I tossed the wings in the sauce and dug in. While they weren’t as crispy as I would have liked, they were a lot better than any other baked chicken wings I’ve ever had. Rather than being slimy, these were actually good. Inside, the meat was juicy and tender. Even so, I think I’ll have to do some experimenting to get the time and temperature just right. Some very tasty experimenting.

These aren’t my dinner. I’m not patient enough to take pictures before I eat. These are the leftovers that are currently in the fridge, taunting me. Eat me, EAT ME!

[Joe]

It's true. I caught a little blurb about a Greek Cultural Festival going on this past weekend on the local 24 hour news channel (why does this exist?). Visions of gyro meat cooking in it's own grease were enough to overcome my disdain for all things “cultural” and even my dislike of eating out alone.* So last Saturday I headed out to St. Sophia's Greek Orthodox Church in Dewitt. From what I saw while I was there, the festival consisted of food and a bit of loud music, definitely my kind of festival. Except for the loud music. I started out with some spanakopita, then I got a gyro and an order of dolmades. I finished off with some Greek yogurt. The spanakopita and gryo were a bit dry and the dolmades were cold (admittedly a standard way of serving them, but I'm not a fan), but the yogurt was really good. It had some nuts and something really sweet on top. Overall, I think I would have done better if I had just gone to Symeons. Though Symeons could stand to offer more desserts that aren't absolutely bathed in honey.

*If you're wondering why I didn't ask anyone to go with me, it's because I also have a dislike for dragging people to something that has a good chance of being really boring. From direct observations that I have made, I can tell you that this is not a dislike that my brothers share.

When I was in my second or third year of College, Paul bought me a case of Ramen Noodles. But this wasn't the quality 11 cents-a-pack Ramen, this was the crappy 10 cents-a-pack Ramen. I don't think I ever got past the first pack. But, since I had the Ramen, I never bought any more. I wouldn't eat the stuff I had, and I wouldn't buy more, and thus I ended up never again eating Ramen. I've thanked Paul for this on a number of occasions.

Alton Brown did a similar thing for me with Macaroni and Cheese, but in a positive way. During Lent, Dad and I have a hard time finding stuff to do for dinner on Fridays because I don't like fish. We agreed to do Macaroni and Cheese one time, but he didn't want to do the boxed stuff. So I looked up Alton Brown's Stove Top Mac-n-Cheese recipe. It's definitely the best stuff I've had, since it uses real sharp cheddar cheese and is surprisingly creamy. Since I made it, I haven't once had boxed Mac and Cheese.

You may have seen the Kraft commercials that claim their Mac and Cheese is really Cheese and Macaroni, well that's crap. Especially since there's probably no actual cheese in there. With AB's stuff it's true, since by uncooked weight you use more cheese than you do macaroni. Good stuff.

P.S. I'm still trying to think of 8 interesting facts about myself. Not having much luck.