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Nov. 12th, 2004 11:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickSo I'm packing for Girls' Weekend Out, which I think ought to be called Women's Weekend Out or similar but I'll be damned if I say anything of the sort on Sicilian grounds. (Think The Princess Bride. If I say that it's sexist, then I'm being oversensitive, but if I don't say anything, then people think it's okay to use the language like that, but maybe if we co-opt the term, like homosexuals have with "queer", it'll grow to be okay in time...) The guys are, of course, having Guys' Weekend Out. My problem here is that "girl" does not map one-to-one onto "guy". Different connotations, y'know?
Despite the annoying name of the thing, one of the largely redeeming features of Girls' Weekend Out is that we have better food than the guys do. This weekend we are having crepes with yer choice of filling (cottage cheese or yogurt) and yer choice of four fruity topping items (caramel-apple, black raspberry, sour-cherry, peach) -- all of which I fully expect to be alarmingly tasty because I'm making them and I fucking R0XX0R in the kitchen, not to put too fine a point on it. I know, up front, that the apple is ungodly good. I fully expect stunning goodness from the sour cherry because, d'oh, it's like making cheesecake topping. Dead easy. (These are real sour cherries, not that awful canned shit.) I think I'll reduce the black raspberries to sauce without fruit because the seeds are annoying as hell... but the flavor is incomparable. Easy on the sugar with that -- it can be a drizzle-on topping and it should be full of color and flavor but not insipidly sweet. I don't want cloyingly sweet at breakfast. I can probably make that the night before when I get there, which will make the morning less hassle. The peaches need some kind of spice -- I'm thinking maybe ginger? I might ask Cousin Sue for thoughts on the matter -- and a lightly-sweetened cornstarch sauce should do them up a treat. These are the perfectly-ripe peaches I froze over the summer, so I expect they'll be fine, no matter what I do.
Presentation... I've been thinking about this and while I would very much enjoy dinking around with presentation, I think making this rather more of a self-serve breakfast will provide smoother, more rapid service for folks. I'll ask the girls when I get there about their thoughts on presentation. I *can* do lovely presentations with decorative stuff, but I am not efficient enough to manage it all by myself. If we're going that route, I'll need a capable, useful helper in the kitchen to do stuff like grate apples, assemble crepes, and ladle out toppings attractively.
Lunch on Saturday (which has nothing to do with me -- I'm the crepe person. Also providing apple pies. Other folks are doing lunch.) is soups, a choice of three or four. I expect great things from the soups because people don't ever bring stuff that they can't make. People only bring (and show off) stuff that they're quite good at making.
I'm hoping that the potluck food efforts work out okay. This is kind of a new thing for us to try, and I lobbied for it because I don't like eating out -- it's expensive and I can make better food than most of the places we wind up going. (There are a few eateries I frequent who make better food than I do -- The Helmand, Akbar, and Germano's, all in downtown Baltimore, do their respective cuisines better than I can, but these are not the sort of places we go out to as a group.) Expecting the homeowner to cook for eight houseguests is a bit overwhelming, and I hate to lobby for more expensive eat-out food because I don't want anyone to feel that the weekend is too expensive. It should be affordable, relaxing, and fun.
I think that the potluck thing is a good idea, an idea whose time has come, an idea worth pursuing. Of course, I also think that cooking is a social activity and a good thing for families and friends to do together. It's a cooperative, busy-hands thing that builds character and prevents violent arguments because it gives everyone a non-confrontational task to attend to. It's a way to learn or discover new techniques (like caramel!!), a way to get an audience, a way to show off a bit. Now, many people were not raised with cooking as a social activity and therefore they are not confident or comfortable with cooking in public. Some people just don't like cooking. For these people, a potluck weekend isn't nearly as easy of a sell. I don't know... I just keep thinking that if they'd try it, they'd like it. (Amazing, how I can't stand evangelical Christians trying to convert me but I go out and evangelize on behalf of fun in the kitchen?)
Anyway, I've got my mise ready to go, except for the stuff that needs to be kept cold. The cooler is ready to be packed when I get home tonight and I've made ice packets to put in it for maximum cooling on the drive to the Fabulous Beige House. It'll be fine. I feel certain of this.
Despite the annoying name of the thing, one of the largely redeeming features of Girls' Weekend Out is that we have better food than the guys do. This weekend we are having crepes with yer choice of filling (cottage cheese or yogurt) and yer choice of four fruity topping items (caramel-apple, black raspberry, sour-cherry, peach) -- all of which I fully expect to be alarmingly tasty because I'm making them and I fucking R0XX0R in the kitchen, not to put too fine a point on it. I know, up front, that the apple is ungodly good. I fully expect stunning goodness from the sour cherry because, d'oh, it's like making cheesecake topping. Dead easy. (These are real sour cherries, not that awful canned shit.) I think I'll reduce the black raspberries to sauce without fruit because the seeds are annoying as hell... but the flavor is incomparable. Easy on the sugar with that -- it can be a drizzle-on topping and it should be full of color and flavor but not insipidly sweet. I don't want cloyingly sweet at breakfast. I can probably make that the night before when I get there, which will make the morning less hassle. The peaches need some kind of spice -- I'm thinking maybe ginger? I might ask Cousin Sue for thoughts on the matter -- and a lightly-sweetened cornstarch sauce should do them up a treat. These are the perfectly-ripe peaches I froze over the summer, so I expect they'll be fine, no matter what I do.
Presentation... I've been thinking about this and while I would very much enjoy dinking around with presentation, I think making this rather more of a self-serve breakfast will provide smoother, more rapid service for folks. I'll ask the girls when I get there about their thoughts on presentation. I *can* do lovely presentations with decorative stuff, but I am not efficient enough to manage it all by myself. If we're going that route, I'll need a capable, useful helper in the kitchen to do stuff like grate apples, assemble crepes, and ladle out toppings attractively.
Lunch on Saturday (which has nothing to do with me -- I'm the crepe person. Also providing apple pies. Other folks are doing lunch.) is soups, a choice of three or four. I expect great things from the soups because people don't ever bring stuff that they can't make. People only bring (and show off) stuff that they're quite good at making.
I'm hoping that the potluck food efforts work out okay. This is kind of a new thing for us to try, and I lobbied for it because I don't like eating out -- it's expensive and I can make better food than most of the places we wind up going. (There are a few eateries I frequent who make better food than I do -- The Helmand, Akbar, and Germano's, all in downtown Baltimore, do their respective cuisines better than I can, but these are not the sort of places we go out to as a group.) Expecting the homeowner to cook for eight houseguests is a bit overwhelming, and I hate to lobby for more expensive eat-out food because I don't want anyone to feel that the weekend is too expensive. It should be affordable, relaxing, and fun.
I think that the potluck thing is a good idea, an idea whose time has come, an idea worth pursuing. Of course, I also think that cooking is a social activity and a good thing for families and friends to do together. It's a cooperative, busy-hands thing that builds character and prevents violent arguments because it gives everyone a non-confrontational task to attend to. It's a way to learn or discover new techniques (like caramel!!), a way to get an audience, a way to show off a bit. Now, many people were not raised with cooking as a social activity and therefore they are not confident or comfortable with cooking in public. Some people just don't like cooking. For these people, a potluck weekend isn't nearly as easy of a sell. I don't know... I just keep thinking that if they'd try it, they'd like it. (Amazing, how I can't stand evangelical Christians trying to convert me but I go out and evangelize on behalf of fun in the kitchen?)
Anyway, I've got my mise ready to go, except for the stuff that needs to be kept cold. The cooler is ready to be packed when I get home tonight and I've made ice packets to put in it for maximum cooling on the drive to the Fabulous Beige House. It'll be fine. I feel certain of this.
