DECEMBER 27
Meilin told me to fill in the ones she missed. Well, I missed this one too. I was visiting my cousin Sharon on Long Island. We had microwaved clams, seafood chowder, lobster and lasagna (Sharon always cooks a lot) and leftover Hallowe'en candy.DECEMBER 20
At Peter and Carol's.DECEMBER 13
DECEMBER 6
Carol & Peter made something that was yummy. It was rizzo (spelling?) and tomato pesto sauce w/ chicken. and some fudge no pudge thingie that was pretty good too, even w/o pudge :-) mer can fit in the toybox. bamf had a hard time fitting in the toy box this time due to his being in France.NOVEMBER 27
It was Thanksgiving at Bamf & Bryn's and there was a lot of food, even for mer. The chunky cranberry sauce from Carol & Peter was great. There was also the 9 hour stuffing from Bamf & Bryn, turkey from sunspark & mer, and sweet potatoe pie (which we ate all in one sitting ) from dave. Birgit, Bryn's Mom, and Maria were also there for a total of 12! Yeah, so we skipped sunday dinner that week.NOVEMBER 23
It was going to be at Carol & Peter's but someone put food poisoning in their food earlier and so they had to spend the evening recuperating. Bamf & Bryn gallantly volunteered to take their place. There was spaghetti and probably some other stuff. mer was at work experimenting with gas jets and large metal creatures.NOVEMBER 16
Hamburgers which did not leek much at Dave's and a cake of some sort. Bryn was doing comdex in the city of psin. Jack once again showed up in his oh-so-fashionable grey flannel suit. The rest of us felt underdressed.NOVEMBER 9
Food of some sort at sunspark & meilin's with yummy jello cake for desert. Carol and Peter have a new Sienna van after someone foolishly totaled the stationwagon. Jack and Cindy are both fine.NOVEMBER 1,2
Saturday, Carol, Peter, Bamf, & Bryn played Corio Bay for the first time, accompanied by squid in black bean sauce at Carol & Peter's. The squid and black beans were not seen making black market deals with the Mafia. Sunday, our usual day, we had spaghetti and fresh bread at Bamf & Bryn's. The spaghetti tried to hide the data crystal but X-Ops was victorious.OCTOBER 26
Spaghetti and meatballs at Dave's with chocolate cake for desert. Peter and Carol had just gotten back from an orienteering meet where Peter ran for 3.5 hours! Carol ran a different course where the markers were not invisible and finished in a mere hour and a half. The weekend culminated with Meilin mind controlling everyone not yet involved to play in Corio Bay.OCTOBER 19
Breakfast for dinner at sunspark & meilin's, including french toast and sausage. Dinner was supposed to be at Carol and Peter's but they were doing time in Alcatraz on account of a friend. We learned that after heart disease and cancer, the third leading cause of death in the U.S. is ill-defined. I'm going try to stay well defined :-)OCTOBER 12
Chicken with the disappearing cheese at Bamf & Bryn's... and some yummy apple pie. Special guest star, Birgit, brought fresh pineapple which was drawn and quartered by special guest excutioner, Zanzibar. Peter and Carol were elsewhere teaching Jack some of finer points of nuclear device acquisition.OCTOBER 5
Some vaguely chinese meat sauce thing on rice and sunspark & merrrr!'s. Regular old homemade chocolate chip cookies for desert. We tried to remember those silly tests (like the one about lifting chairs) that you do to to determine who's female. They turned out to be adequate tests of who is Bryn and who's not.SEPTEMBER 28
Yummy spaetzle at Dave's with lemon bars for desert. He said he ignored the recipes on the back of the box. If only ignoring the instructions always had such good results. Bamf was having 5 course french food in Too Loose. Jack learned that if you complain enough, you don't have to eat your rice cereal.SEPTEMBER 21
Red and green sauces for pasta at Carol & Peter's. The fresh pesto sauce with chicken was quite good and possibly worth buying a food processor for. (The red one was tasty too :) The torture-team thinks Jack liked his sweet potatoes. Desert was a caffeine dream, chocolate-coffee pudding ala Martha Stewart.SEPTEMBER 14
Really tasty curry at Bamf & Bryn's with chocolate-raspberry bars for desert. Consensus has it that the lemon bars win. The curry mix is theoretically from a box you get at Safeway, but unfortunately for meilin not all Safeway's are created equal.SEPTEMBER 7
Sag chicken again at Dave's with lemon bars for desert. Carol, Peter, sunspark & meilin were all very late because they were watching hang-gliders in SF. Ham radios did not save the day. Bamf & Bryn had lots of stories from their trip to Canada, including a meeting with a giant elk during one twilight dinner. There were no elk at Dave's.AUGUST 31
Chicken picatta again at sunspark & meilin's. We preempted Dave's spot in the queue because sunspark's parents were in town. Jack was the floor show, and now comes with his very own rule-the-world command control center. Cheese cake by dave with cherries on top was much yummy :-)AUGUST 24
Stroganoff at Bamf & Bryn's (California). Sunspark & Dave chased crack team windsurfers Susie & Mikee around in kayaks. (Maui) Jack didn't take over the world. (Qatar)AUGUST 17
Fajitas at Peter and Carol's again 'cause bamf & bryn missed it last time. It was only fair since Sunspark, meilin & dave weren't there.AUGUST 10
Tasty fajitas at Peter & Carol's. Boy, garden fresh tomatoes are really good. Lots of almond jello for desert, good thing it was yummy. Jack found Dave's beard so facinating he even smiled. Carol learned to play mine sweeper on the palmtop.AUGUST 3
Meatloaf surprise at sunspark & meilin's. For the first time in weeks, everyone was there (except Cindy). We had lemonthingy (tm) for desert again, yum! The entire dinner went by without a single high speed car chase, explosion, or shootout. This may have contributed to Jack's multiple demonstrations of his new-found yawning ability.JULY 27
Tacos, both hard and soft shell, at Davemodiano's. After the initial red-liquid disaster, things went smoothly. (Read: The body was disposed of without a trace.) Peter and Carol were undercover, accompanying Jack on the preliminary scouting mission for his world tour. Desert was sweet potato pie, a la X-Files, reminiscent of last thanksgiving when we first tried it.JULY 20
Dinner at Carol and Peter's. Jack didn't cook the Korean pork chops. Bryn made it there! Dave, Sunspark, and Meilin were at Deep Creek giving people their bi-annual windsurfing lesson.JULY 13
Tasty tagliarini with sage and stuff at Bamf & bryn's. And a lemonthingy for desert that was different from the lemon thingy that peter made. Even though it sounds like it might be some kind of alien, tagliarini is just a fancy name for noodle. Bryn found some made-for-TV-movie-music that she wrote at MIT, and Jack said hello to Mr. Frog in RTTY.JULY 6
Chicken picatta and glass noodle salad at sunspark & meilin's. The chicken was pretty yummy for something requiring capers (a mysterious food item most of us previously thought was some sort of weird fish). Jello cake in blues and greens, this time with ready-made frosting. sunspark was right about putting in all the jello.JUNE 29
Dinner at Carol & Peter's. Dunno what it was because sunspark and I went to Disneyland. The outdoor light show "Fantasmic!" was amazing. Real fire-breathing dragons with 150' wingspans, real fire on the lake, other huge monsters, all intertwined with a huge ethereal display of images, light, and sound. Totally immersive. Worth the entire price of the admission.JUNE 22
Sag chicken at Davemodiano's, recipe from the web. Needs more yogurt.JUNE 15
With Sunspark "Mr. Social Coordinator" Miles, out of town, plans were in an even more chaotic state of disarray than usual. (I am being generous here. Implying that there was a plan at all is like asking your imagination to touch its toes with its nose.) People eventually ended up at bamf & Bryn's where there was "some pasta, chicken thing."MAY 31
Swedish meatballs in stroganoff sauce at Meilin & Sunspark's. Had it over curly egg noodles. This was the second try and it was okay. Yet another chocolate mooooose pie for desert. Bamf & Bryn couldn't make it. Jack turned his head while laying on the futon and performed other amazing tricks.JUNE 7
Barbeque at Carol & Peter's. Chicken, Spam(tm), sausages, corn on the cob, and a flat lemon thingie that was yummy. The grilled Spam(tm) (thoughtfully supplied by Zanzibar) was the highlight. Bryn, who'd never had Spam(tm) before, declared it tasty. Jack made noises because he couldn't have any. As I recall, it was low sodium Spam(tm).MAY 24
Bulgogi again at Bamf & Bryn's. Yum! And apple pie which was a major production involving ham radios and crust making.MAY 17
Curry beef stuff over rice at Meilin & Sunspark's. Sort of followed the recipe on the back of a package of Yeo brand "Malaysian Curry Powder." Used coconut milk instead of cow. I think we had the flourescent cake again, this time in blues and greens.MAY 10
Flourescent chicken at Davemodiano's place. Flourescent chicken was really good that day, and Sunspark liked the version without chicken even better. I think the brand of dressing was the key. Also, not draining the sour kraut properly made more yummy sauce in the bottom of the dish. Flourescent cake (courtesy of Sunspark) in delicate shades of neon orange and nuclear red complimented the main course. For some reason, Meilin was hungrier than usual and ate several times her weight in food.MAY 3
A really tasty and hearty stew called paella at Carol and Peter's. It came in two varieties, with squiggly squirmy stuff from the sea, and without. Bryn liked the "without." It had all kinds of things in it, and looked like it took forever to make. We might have had two deserts that day, both chocolate moose pie and peaches&cream. (Sunspark was still very enamored of our new motorized kitchen power tool, the electric mixer.)APRIL
Chicken & broccoli on rigatoni at Bamf & Bryn's. The recipe was reverse engineered from the Bertucci's original. Corn on the cob was really good, a surprise for Peter because heretofore he had thought you could only get good corn in the midwest. It was a surprise for the rest of us as well since as we all know, Safeway often times falls short of farm-fresh. The choco-mint brownies of doom were supplemented by one of Sunspark's choco-moose pies.APRIL
I guess we had food at Sunspark & Meilin's, but I forget what.APRIL
Hamburgers? at Davemodiano's. Carol and Peter couldn't make it? because Jack had become heavily involved in a take-over-the-world plot and they wanted to help him in his quest for world domination.EARLY 1997
After the thanksgiving thing, we had another dinner or two at Sunspark & Meilin's, followed by one or two at Bamf & Bryn's. Then someone (not naming any names, but his name begins with a D-A-V...) thought it'd be a good idea to do a round robin of dinners.I think the first official one was at bamf & bryn's. In the beginning, Davemodiano was part of the sunspark & meilin house in so far as cooking went. In time, he split off and formed his own cabal. There was more than one lasagne those first few times since that was one of the few dishes the sunspark, meilin, & davemodiano trio had had successful first-hand encounters with.
LATE 1996
DaveM reminds me that maybe this whole thing started with Thanksgiving dinner at Sunspark & Meilin's. The three of us had been having dinners on weekends anyhow, since after windsurfing all afternoon, it's the natural thing to do. Then Bamf & Bryn moved nearby and sunspark had the brilliant idea to cook. That year it was Donna and Francis's turn to bein town (last year, Francis cooked and it was yummy.) In any case, it was the first time we've done dinner for 7 or so and amazingly enough, it wasn't a disaster.You know, we still have frozen leftover turkey in the freezer. It's taking up valuable space that could be used for frozen apricots though, so I think it'll have to go soon.