post mortem and the usual suspects

[betaphen]

i have been pretty stupid busy with the world. finally checked in the previously mentioned 2 weeks of code today, an hour and a half before the hard deadline, even though i can't say for certain it all works. i have about a dozen other things to do as well that i just haven't been able to get to. urk

Comments

[zanfur]

You are a fabulous cook. Yeowza. I need to learn...

[physics_dude]

How does one acquire food awesomeness? I feel like I'm a decent cook when there's a recipe in front of me, but I'm not very good at this course selection stuff or "spicing it up a bit", the art if you will of preparing food. Presumably the answer is a lot of it comes from experience and I just need to be more attentive in situations where food is being served.

I should also learn more about wine pairing and thus increase my ponciness.

[betaphen]

well. i must warn you that the menu at the party was driven primarily by simplicity and what could be mostly done ahead. i then picked foods for being delicious, not seasonally inappropriate, and for having a good mix of familiar and poncy. also, i would rate my skills as "mediocre" and could spend a long time critiquing the party food, but that's boring.

otherwise. i believe the answer is to either cook a lot, think about food all the time, or frequently try new and delicious foods, preferably all three. you will eventually develop an intuition for it. presentation and planning are separate skills, but the same advice applies.

wine pairings are overrated unless you hang out with people who care, or can at least tell. most of the time you can get by by asking either the waiter at restaurants or the knowledgeable wine person at your favorite alcohol purveyor, situation dependent.

[merastra]

OMG I'm jealous. :-) Crispy-crunchy work, done well, followed by a flurry of fancy food and good party. That's my idea of fun. Yay for food helpers! You've totally taken off with the ponciness. Congrats! I haven't been paying attention to the subject of appetizers at ALL and I'm impressed witn your creativity there.

So when do you find out how your checkin worked out? And what did you think of the manchego y membrillo pairing? We had manchego a few times last week and really liked it, no membrillo.

[betaphen]

the important thing is finding out whether my checkin broke anything, which it didn't. i'm spending today figuring out if it actually works... ;-)

manchego and membrillo together are...pretty good, though not as good as i imagined. i got prefab membrillo which tasted good but didn't have that lush orange color your fresh stuff did. if more people had shown up i would have also served manchego with fig jam on baguette rounds (tastiness is pure conjecture there) going on a sort of fruit and cheese on bread theme.

[merastra]

yay for no-breaky! :-) good lucky with the worky. ;-)

oh, speaking of fig jam, we got fig jam on vacation. a little different and as tasty as normal jams. i'd have taken some home except we didn't check luggage so no gels allowed.