Baby Shower On Steriods.

Last weekend we hosted the baby shower at our place. This is a distinctly american tradition. Usually its given by a friend of the mother to be and its a strictly women only affair. We decided to break with a tradition a bit and just use it as an excuse to have a big party. We in fact ended up with 60 people ( 50 adults and 10 kids ).

The preparation started the day before with some serious cooking -- 27 pounds of meat were bought and 22 pounds ended up being cooked... I manned the smoker and the grill for around eight hours. Although once the smoker was finished it was plain sailing as I have a wireless temp monitor. When things are on the gas grill under indirect heat I can just go inside and drink wine. Which is what I ended up doing as some of our friends came over that night and we played a few games of clue ( cluedo for the brits )! great start!

The other dishes were brought by the guests on the day - pot luck style - and that worked out great -- I was very impressed -- there was certainly an amazing gauntlet of deserts!

On the day things went swimmingly! -- the weather was kind ( especially considering that the day after it rained cats and dogs ) -- and the atmosphere festive. I personally had a great time playing the whole social butterfly role -- meeting and greeting as many people as I could! while imbibbing as much drink as possible -- I think/hope everyone else had a good time too -- I'm certainly thankful for the attendance level as I don't know what we would have done with all that meat:-)

Lastly I would like to thank everybody for there generously provided gifts! -- I'm sure they will all come in handy and they are certainly very appreciated -- its great to know that we have so many good friends....

Batali Vs Oliver

Ihef ron Chef America recently hosted a battle between the english chef Jamie Oliver and Iron Chef Mario Batali. I have to confess to liking Batali but when I saw a fellow country men in kitchen stadium I was eventually driven to cheering for the brit... of course it helped that he had quite a character for a sous chef and that he cooked fish and chips! He had even brought a copy of the Sun to plate the fish and chips on -- very cool.

Sadly Oliver's Kung Fu was not strong enough and Iron Chef Batali came away victorious!

The vegatables.

I realized something.

I'm going to be an example to somebody. Thats going to be really strange. All of a sudden it's more important that I do the right thing. Its funny how if it's just you, then doing the wrong thing can be less of an issue.

I'm gonna have to eat more veggies. For a while now I have to confess that I have eaten far to few vegatables, but now what if my son copies me! That might be a little problem, thats hardly the right thing.

Now I start to wonder how many times my parents did something because it would be the right example. I mean surely there are parents who would just love to have a nice McD's but they don't because they want their children eating the rabbit food....

Naturally it becomes even more interesting if you think about other choices that you make, smoking, drinking, etc -- amazing...

Happy New Year

Best wishes to all! Good luck in the new year. Don't forget to keep me up to date.

No Country For Old Men.

I saw this in the theater just before the holidays. I have to say it is outstanding! very involving and very well put together. It is pretty violent (again) but the violence exists to serve the story. It was made even more interesting to watch by the fact that I was watching it in texas and it takes place there. I would recommend the movie -- and interestingly the screenplay is available online because the movie is under oscar consideration.