Al's and Alpacas

Marisa, Rachel, and myself are all great fans of the WB television series Gilmore Girls. I find that I reference the show on a daily basis, and we generally watch at least a couple episodes a week. In the town of Stars Hollow where the Gilmore girls live, there is a restaurant called Al's Pancake World. However, we learn that after the first couple days of pancake making, Al discovers that he isn't an expert pancake maker, and decides to switch to international cuisine (although I don't think he is expert at that either...), that he switches up on a semi-regular basis. Anyway, he had already printed enough napkins with the restaurant name on them to last a lifetime, so the name stuck and the cuisine changed.

One day during some musing about dinner and Gilmore Girls, I suggested to Marisa that we have a different ethnic food variety every Friday night, we would learn a couple phrases, listen to native music, and call it Al's Pancake World night. This is the basis of our Friday night dinners. (Although this week it had to be pushed back to Saturday.) Our first was fondue night, and this week we had Burmese food!

After her sophomore year at Whitman, Rachel led a GlobeMed trip to Burma to meet the organizations that they support, and to learn more about the culture and society, as well as the organization. While she was there, she had a variety of different Burmese food, and returned with a cook book from a restaurant called MoMo and BoBo's.

We selected three recipes: Potato Curry served with flat bread, a banana-lime beverage, and Burmese Tea Cakes. We all loved the curry and banana drink, but there was a mixed review on the tea cakes. Here are some pictures:

Curry and Banana drink! We often get so excited about eating that we forget to take a picture...

Our Tea Cakes steaming...this took a bit of ingenuity!

Tea Time!

Like I said, the tea cakes received mixed reviews. I really loved their spongy, moist texture! It reminded me a lot of bread pudding. The flavor was a bit lackluster; Asian desserts are often not too sweet. The smell was rather rancid though, like that of sulfur or rotting eggs. No one experienced any stomach issues post-tea though, so it must have simply been some sort of chemical reaction between the ingredients.

Marisa and Rachel on kitchen duty.

The serious and the sillies.

Rachel found a recipe for scones and wanted to try it out this morning, so we bought some fresh strawberries at the farmers' market (I was amazed they still had berries available!). The scones turned out wonderfully, and were a big hit in the house this morning.

Strawberry, lemon, poppyseed scone with a hot cup of English breakfast tea!

Then this afternoon we went to an Alpaca farm, and had a great time looking at alpacas (laughing at alpacas), drinking apple cider, and perusing the alpaca yarn and clothing. Fun was had by all!

Almost done! This afternoon I had a work BBQ (I work at the college bookstore) at one of our managers' houses, and was instructed to bring a dessert. After much deliberation I decided to share my Austrian culture by serving apple strudel! (Maybe not the best idea, as this is not something I have made before.) It turned out quite well, and I think people really enjoyed it!

I hope everyone has a great week -- happy fall!