Spongy Cheese Cubes

Okay, after a week of begging and prodding by Rachel (both figurative and literal) I'm finally ready to blog. Let's start with a recap of last week's visit by Abba, Pat, Cham and Dov. Pat was on the same flight with Cham and Dov since she went to SanFran for business, and Abba was supposed to get in about an hour later but his flight was delayed. So I picked them up from the airport and took them out to dinner. I use the term "took out" loosely, since all I did was drive - Pat actually paid (thanks Pat!). As I've mentioned here before, there are no normal kosher restaurants in Seattle. So we went to the vegetarian Indian place (their motto: at least it's not vegan!). Dovid asked the waitress what the closest thing to pizza was and pat asked what the closest thing to vegetables was. They didn't have anything remotely close to either one. But as I had already discovered the best thing on the menu last time I was there I had no problems. Although by the time I had tasted everyone else's food I came to the conclusion that all the food there is the same - cubes of "cheese" that would be more accurately described as "scotch brite sponge chunks" with some vegetables in some kind of red sauce that tastes like Devon Ave smells, served with rice. Which is still better than the slime balls we had at the vegan chinese place.

On to shabbos: Rachel made this chicken in rice thing from the Yeshiva cookbook that was really good. The trick is that you cook the chicken on top of the rice so that all the fat that drips out of the chicken that normally looks so gross in the pan soaks into the rice, more or less deep-frying it. YUM! Abba, as usual, fedexed us a prime rib. He overnighted it the Thursday a week before they came so we wouldn't have any doubts about it arriving in time to cook it for shabbos. Unfortunately, that was the week of the snow storm here so fedex was unable to deliver it on time. We got it Monday. We thought that all hope was lost, but it was still cold, albeit thawed, and didn't smell bad. The other meat in the package also looked okay. So we decided to eat it. It ended up being fine - at least so far we haven't had any adverse effects. And even if we had gotten sick it probably would still have been worth it because it was soooooo good! Thanks Abba!

On Saturday night we were debating going to the indian casino that's near here, but it's like an hour away and we couldn't really get our act together in time. Also I was a wet blanket (big surprise, right?). So we ended up going to Albertson's and buying some frozen pizzas, which is what you do when you live in a lame city that has no kosher pizza places. And we took out the deep fryer and made some spicy curly fries, thanks to the curly fry maker that mom got us - it actually worked really well. Thanks Mom! I think it's safe to say that the theme of the weekend was ingesting unhealthy quantities of fat and oil (not to mention cheese sponges).

On Sunday Abba and Pat left early and the rest of us sat around all day like a bunch of big fat blobs. Our only adventure was trying to hook up the cable from our internet to my TV tuner card in the computer to try and watch the Bears game (go Bears!), but for some reason it didn't work. We did go to my neighbor's place to watch the last few minutes on his 9 inch TV. We may end up doing the same thing for the super bowl unless we get invited to a real super bowl party. If we stay home we hope to continue the tradition of making BLTs using fried pastrami as a substitute for the real B, and fresh onion rings and french fries. I love having a deep fryer! Angioplasty, anyone?

Outside of the family visiting not much else has been happening here lately. We had our first non-family shabbos guest this week and rachel made pumpkin pie because we had 3 giant cans of pumpkin filling (1/2 a can down, 2.5 to go!). Let this be a lesson for you all: don't do your impulse shopping at Costco.

The big work-related news is the Vista/Office 2007 public release this week. All the real partying will be happening in NY but we are having satellite video feeds in some of he cafeterias. After the speeches they will be dropping hundreds of balloons in the places with the video feeds, and some of them will have tickets for prizes in them! Laptops, Zunes, Xbox 360's... Wish me luck! If anyone wants my employee discount on Vista or Office let me know (Mom and Abba are already on my list).

But it has been otherwise quiet around here. I guess that will come to an abrupt end soon so we are trying to enjoy the tranquility. But in the meantime that is all the news from the Pacific Northwest. Hope to see you all soon!

Ari