Fun with Food

MOUTHS TO FEED: A few days ago, I offered to take dinner to a friend's family. Their young daughter recently underwent her eighth surgery. They have to drive all the way down to Portland from Seattle for her procedures and appointments. I figured they could use a hot, hearty meal waiting for them during their last trip. 

We opted to make beef and bison chili, a favorite of ours. It has tons of roasted carrots, onions and celery, and a nice amount of warmth without being too hot. We filled up two enormous glass jars for them.

We made some cheesy rolls as a side. I remembered that Red Lobster is famous for cheese biscuits, so I found a copycat recipe online. We followed it carefully and they were really good! (Next time I would add sharper cheese and a pinch more salt, however.)

We decided on good ol' snickerdoodles for dessert. They looked and smelled so good!

We've also been planning this month's Teen Feed. We'll be serving on the fourth Saturday of the month, which puts us a couple of days after Thanksgiving. Rest assured, our menu will be 100 percent turkey free. :) I know the teens will be "turkeyed out," for lack of a better term, by Saturday.

Instead, we're going with food of the Asian persuasion. A big, flavorful stir fry will be our main entrée (think lots of protein in a spicy sauce, with mega veggies over aromatic rice).  Sides will be egg rolls and nori (seaweed). Dessert will be matcha and white chocolate cookies or an Asian-inspired custard.   We'll have bubble tea for dessert, and a couple of other treats, too. 

When researching for this month's menu, we went to DK Market, a sprawling Asian grocery store in Renton. They have thousands of interesting things, but this box caught my eye. 

Purple pancakes? Who could pass that up? So, I bought a box for CJ and Annabelle. We gave it a test drive. The pancakes are, indeed purple. 

Their flavor was really good. A little earthy and not as sweet as regular pancakes. We would buy them again.

STOLEN TACOS: Back on November 4, we took advantage of Taco Bell's "Steal a Taco" promotion, whereby anyone who wanted one could get a taco for free, thanks to there being a stolen base during the World Series.  

It's a genius promotion on their part. You might think, "How can they afford to do that?" Well, I'll tell you how. We spent 17 damn dollars for our "free" tacos by the time the kids were done ordering drinks and another meal item apiece.