Last week I felt like I was on iron chef. Our friend Henry decided to have a dinner party at our house (we thought we were just having him over, but it was really him and 4 guests!). He came 1 hr late, and we all had to cook this Asian feast in about 50 minutes…….all in all, it was a ton of fun! See, this is one thing I like about being back in College – Dinner parties on a Wednesday evening; what could be better 
The menu:
Pork marinated in Dr. Pepper and star anise
Steamed fish with some kind of sauce
Curried vegetables
some kind of weird mushroom soup ( He swears there were no chicken feet, but something looked fishy to me!)
rice, of course!
All in all, a tasty meal, though the curry paste he brought over had 1.6g Sodium PER 2 tbsp…that is like a lifetime supply in one jar. I was seriously guzzling water the next day. The pork was actually pretty good, and really you couldn’t taste the Dr. Pepper…it was just to tenderize the meat (hmmm…..if it can break down meat so well, what is it doing when we drink it….).
I’m not a huge lover of Chinese food, so it was good to have somebody introduce me to some new flavors. Henry enlightened us to the way of the rice cooker this year, so now we have quinoa/rice/spelt ready for us regularly. I must admit, my grain consumption has increased at Davis, but its just so easy to grab pre-made rice pilaf than to whip something up at every meal….. I digress…….
here are some pics of what we made. Sorry, I don’t have recipes and judging by the fury that Henry put it all together, I’m pretty sure these were family recipes that haven’t been written down. Love it!
Henry and Patty in action
Curried veggie complete with lifetime supply of sodium…but tasty!
