ADD Dinner

Last night we had two couples over for dinner. Every once in awhile I like to add a little more chaos to the work day by cleaning up planning a meal and preparing it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all worth it. Come to think of it, it wouldn’t matter if I planned it 3 months ago cause I would still be running around getting ready. Why? Because it is right at the end of my “work day” which is always filled with creativity and the proverbial phrase I say to myself, “If I could just finish…” place in there anything from painting to emailing to looking for inspiration for the next day.

But, all that isn’t what this post is about. It’s about introducing the right mix of creative people to each other and seeing what happens. I love this part! There is a book called “The Tipping Point” by Malcom Gladwell which talks about three types of people; connectors, mavens, and salesmen. Connectors know everyone and are willing to share info by connecting with everyone. You’ll know who they are. They are easy to spot on FB. They have the most friends. Then there are the mavens. They are the ones with a strong desire to help others. They are the ones on FB always posting articles and forwarding posts. In my opinion they are the fine line between the squeaky wheel and the creative type with full on inspiration. Finally, there are the salesmen. These are the people with the passion for getting the word out there. They aren’t on FB. They are calling you on the phone.

My little soirée had a musician and his lovely wife who has the corporate gig going, but moonlights as a retro hip blogger and traveler. The second couple, both who are in the field of helping and saving lives by night or wee hours of the morning depending on their schedule are also creating art or searching out the newest musical talent. All have a deep passion and creative edge that keeps the conversation lively moving and often off track. Speaking as one with a short attention span, I think I can speak for the other guys when I say, if it weren’t for our wives reminding us of our main point we would still be talking.

Ok, what was the main point of this post…Oh for dessert we had Victory Storm King Stout Floats with the Victory Storm King Ice Cream with little chunks of chocolate malt. Awesome!

$40 and Closer to Death

This weekend I bought a personal deep fryer at Walmart. I was so excited, my own personal cholesterol maker. I am lucky that last week was my birthday and my mom and Gram still send cards with cash in them. Isn’t there an unwritten rule, that you don’t send cash in the mail? Luckily, our postal worker must have another paying job so my birthday card arrived with cash intact.

Once home, I carefully unwrapped my perfect gift to myself. My mind wandered as I thought of all the things I could fry.  My mouth started to water and the excitement caused my heart to skip a beat. Maybe it was my brain telling it to exercise. What was the “crème de la crème”, was that I intended not only to fry your standard potatoes, but I was also going to fry pickles and yes the ultimate urban legend dessert, “the fried snickers bar.” This was going to be my “piéce de résistance.” It would be the end to a great meal.

Knowing I was going to end on a triple digit calorie buster, I wanted the meal to be healthy. So, we started off with two cheeses; a brie and a soft cheese with a nice stinky rind and some foie gras. We had to have the inside of the duck as the starter because we would have the outside of the duck as the entrée.  The cheeses were followed by a mushroom soup; something nice and earthy to make way for the wild game. Next, was the main course, which consisted of duck with an apple bourbon glaze accompanied by some red quinoa.  Quinoa is a grain that I spotted on the top shelf of the pasta aisle in Wegmans. It looked fancy and colorful in an earthy way. Plus, it was a grain so it had to be healthy. This all made a great base for the fried dessert. All the courses were helped down the gullet by a red wine from the Napa Valley, called the Prisoner. There wasn’t a bad part to the meal and it was served in gourmet portions to make it look really fancy and also so that we could save room for the snickers.

Ok so this is what you have to do to fry a Snickers bar. First you freeze the Snickers the night before. I used the bite size ones which worked well and held their shape. Next I coated the frozen bars with egg white then rolled them in dry funnel cake mix. I then mixed up the funnel cake batter to a nice thick consistency and dredged the Snickers bars through it. Making sure they were heavily coated, I plunged them into the hot oil. Those suckers browned up to a wonderful golden brown and floated to the top in less than 30 seconds. I crisped them up for another 30 seconds, took them out and placed them on a paper towel to soak up some of the calories. While still sizzling, I placed them next to scoops of Snickers ice cream and drizzled chocolate on top… Heavenly!