So it's time for the push up competition. There are 3 competitors: the Adolescent, Mike and the Hubby (both way past adolescence in age but not in spirit). There's big build up to the main event. Lots of chest puffing. I'm not sure who will win. The Adolescent has been flexing and pumping for the past year. He's pretty jacked, as they say in manspeak. And he has youth on his side. But Mike has also been working out. And the Hubby is just a strong guy all around.
Lots of tension and man egos on the line. Mike goes first. He does 32. The Hubby goes next. He also does 32! The Adolescent goes last. He gives himself a handicap by doing tricep pushups (much more difficult)...but can only do 27! Victory for the old guys!!! The Adolescent can't bear the thought of losing to old guys so he does it AGAIN...regular push ups this time...and does 29!! But not enough to put him into the lead! Lots of fist pumping and chest thumping all around!
Mike winning the push up competition. The Adolescent is making sure Mike lowers his chest to the competition standard.
A rematch is called for the next morning. The Adolescent goes first and does 40. The Hubby does 39. And Mike does 42!!! Victory is sweet, isn't it Mike?
While all the manly puffing and preening is going on, Mary is busy making dinner to feed the famished competitors and their fans.
Hungry competitors
It's hard for her not to let her eye rolling interfere with her cooking but she manages to do both beautifully. She makes Pasta with Bocconcini, Basil, and Tomatoes (found in Main Dishes) and a tasty vegetable casserole.
Vegetable casserole
We eat dinner, our last night together before our friends return to the city. The food is excellent, the conversation animated, and we even get used to the faint lingering scent of testosterone in the air.
My mother recently came up with the idea to start a cooking blog, with all her recipes and pictures of her food on display for the curious blogger. Excited by this idea, she began making dinner for us and I started taking pictures, chatting feverishly about ideas for Gastronomical. Somewhere in this confusion, a hanging wine glass fell from its perch and shattered all over the counter. And the zucchini that was going to be transformed into an amazing meal for our dinner in just about an hour was unfortunately right in the crash zone. We spent the next twenty minutes deciding if we should individually wipe every piece of zucchini to make sure it was free of glass or if we should just throw out all my mom's progress on dinner. We tried the first option, finally resorting to throwing the whole thing out with the fear of swallowing a delicious piece of glass. Definitely a start with a BANG to Gastronomical.
If the zucchini weren't tainted with glass, the first post of this blog would go something like this:
Tonight I decided to make roasted zuchinnis with pasta. Yadda yadda yadda, cut them, add onions, garlic, and roast 'em up!
Enjoy with pasta! Yay! It all worked out. Not.
Plan B:
Improvised roasted cauliflower with onions and garlic with pasta. Plan B was definitely not as colourful as the original recipe (glass included) but, since we're in the middle of nowhere at a cottage for the week, it was the best my mom could do.
While this new concoction is cooking, I'm going to go look for more shards of glass in the carpet...
Signed, Gastronome's daughter
Hi there! This is the Gastronome proper now...the picture above is me and my family and ones who are like family to me. The muscular guy on the left is my dear friend Mike...he's flexing because my son Theo (the Adolescent) in the red is also flexing and they have a little competition going...the push up competition will be the highlight of our time together! My daughter is the photographer so you don't see her in any of these pictures. She just got a new fancy camera for Christmas. Not sure what I'll do when she goes back to university?! My dear friend Mary is the one reading the cooking mag with the reading glasses...she is concerned with where the fashion is in this photo?! We're at a cottage for the week so happily there is NO fashion necessary! Their son Paolo is on the extreme right. He's the one who came up with the title for my blog. He's requesting royalties when this goes global the way of Julia vs Julia. Standing beside Paolo is the Hubby and youngest son Nigel (the Beamer).
In hindsight it was probably not the best time to create a blog about love of food and entertaining in the middle of a food crisis! But as I get older I'm trying to "embrace my inner keener" and if an idea seems like a good one, with relatively low risk, I'm going to try and go for it.
Music Playing While Cooking:
DJ Sammy - L'bby Haba
Negrocan - Cada Vez (Que Te Veo)
Pasta with Roasted Cauliflower
The replacement dinner of Pasta with Roasted Cauliflower (found in Main Dishes) was delicious. For dessert we had Apple Crisp (found in Desserts) which is a recipe that was my mother's that I've tweaked.
Family and Friends
Here we are looking happy but we're actually starving. It's taken 3 hours since I started making this simple easy pasta dish!
After dinner we played GAMES which I don't recommend at a regular dinner party but we're at a cottage and for some reason people want to play games at a cottage. This night we played Celebrity that Paolo taught us. Get into teams. Everyone writes the names of well known people or characters on a piece of paper...one name per paper. Fold the papers, put them in a hat. Then it's sort of like glorified charades. You have to see how many names you can get your team members to say in a minute. For the first round, the first team appoints one team member to be the describer who uses words to describe the person on the paper without saying the person's name. Once the team guesses one correctly, the describer goes on to the next name. You can skip ones you don't know. Team members have to guess as many names as they can in a minute. Then it's the next team's turn who carries on with the remaining names in the hat. After one minute, the next team goes and so on. You keep rotating teams until all the names are guessed. For the second round you put all the names back in the hat and the next team goes but this time you can only act out the character. For the third round, you put all the names back in the hat and this time you can only use ONE word to get your team members to guess who the character is. Very fun!
Of course during game playing there's always drama, in our case usually caused by the Hubby who is very competitive and who everyone usually loves but who everyone secretly hates during game playing times. I usually try to be on the same team as him otherwise I hate him too...!
So this is the end of the inaugural post of Gastronomical...
