Saturday, April 30, 2011

Cook Off

Sometimes by not going out at night, you can have the best times. Last night was one of those nights. I got to put some of my foodie skills to the test in a guys vs. girls cook-off. You can say what you want about guys' cooking, but we can step it up bigtime when the moment calls for it.

My squad cooked up an Italian themed meal with bruschetta, chicken parmigiana with spaghetti, and finished off with chocolate-drizzled almond butter cookies. This was a bit tricky to do with the small apartment kitchens that Disney has for us, but we managed well between 2 apartments/ovens.



The girls whipped up some Southern specialities as they're all from below the Mason Dixon themselves. They cooked up mashed potatoes, biscuits and gravy, country-fried steak, green bean casserole, carrot cake muffins, and brownies. I've never had country-fried steak before, but daaaaang its worth a taste. It has a lot more of savory flavor that you don't get with just a grilled steak alone. I had been promised carrot cake a while back and was really pumped to have some as it is pretty much my favorite dessert food. The turnout, for this time, was somewhat disappointing since the girls went a bit too quickly on the preparation and didn't get the recipe down as much as they have liked to. The cream creese/cinnamon frosting was delicious but lacked the characteristic rich, flavorful cake to complement it. Other than that, the southern specialties were great to have. I can't say I get that kind of food selection back home.

In the "cook off" mood, we had brought some judges in to weigh in on the food. Well, suffice to say there wasn't a whole lot of critiquing going on as we all just ate a bunch of great food in a fun atmosphere. (Guys won by default. Girls showed up to the big game late. Tsk tsk) I feel that I may need to break out the cooking skills a bit more often.

Thanks for the read.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Ice Cream Sink Adventure

I went to Beaches and Cream (Disney's Yacht and Beach Club) the other night with two of my Aussie friends, Jess and Tim, to tackle their prized dessert. We had plans to do this ever since we realized that each of us was an ice cream fiend and it was only natural that we get down to business and get an ice cream sink.

The ice cream sink itself is 8 scoops of ice cream with candy bar chunks, oreos, muffins, bananas, strawberries, pineapple, fudge, peanut butter, nuts, and an entire can of whipped cream to top it all off. All of this is served in a (clean) kitchen sink. This bad boy is meant to serve 4, but the three of us did some good work on it. Here's a peek at what we downed...



A few hours postprandial was a sugar high/crash adventure with those 2, then chased with a night out in Orlando lasting til sunrise the next day. Success!