Weekend Update

Saturday I went over to Tom's house for a BBQ. I wasn't sure how many folk would be there, so I got to the Beaverton Farmer's Market early and stocked up on ingredients for salsa. As I proposed before, I made four batches: food-processor with cilantro, food-processor without, hand-prepped with cilantro, and hand-prepped without. And a comment to Valeska (Tom, you can forward this, as I don't expect Valeska will see this otherwise): the food-processor recipe and the hand-prep recipe differ in a few ways. They are not identical, but other than texture, I guess I can see how they'd be difficult to differentiate.

The tomatoes themselves were the stars. I walked the whole market sniffing and squeezing, looking for the best tomato for my salsa. In the end, I settled on two varieties at the same stall. I asked the farmer what he thought of each, and he recommended one (Celebration? I can't remember all these cute breed names). I asked if it was too sweet, and he just cut a chunk off one and handed it to me! And boy, howdy, was it ever rich. So I hied myself home, and began the work of cutting, dicing and mincing, using my new favorite, the santoku.

I need to pause here and say that I realize I may be more enthusiastic about the salsa I make than any given friend who eats it. Part of the fun for me is in the assembly. It just tastes better to me when I make it myself from fresh ingredients. I'm afraid I may have bored folks with my 'waxing rhapsodic' on the virtues of these salsa recipes. By the end of the night, the four small tubs of salsa were at most half depleted, and Tom was suggesting I take them home. But I wanted to follow my original plan and just leave them with Tom. I doubt he'll finish it off, even with help from Alan and James and crew...

Anyway, Bo and Lisa, James, Alan, Dan, Valeska (and later Chris) and Tom's card playing friend (sorry Tom, can't remember his name) were there for the festivities, and everybody brought something to eat. So it was a real spread. I ate a burger, but mostly nibbled on and off throughout the evening. Alan's hummus was very tasty. Not to slight any of the other food, I'm just a hummus nut.

After the eats, I spent quite a lot of time downstairs with Alan watching him demo Dead Rising and Ninety-Nine Nights on Tom's Xbox 360. You'll recall that I said that if anything could get me to buy a 360, it'd be Dead Rising. Well, nothing I saw changed my mind. DR is a fun game (with a sick sense of humor), though I expect the key combos will escape me. Alan has a way of making that sort of gameplay seem easy, when it's really not.

I even spent a little time chatting with Adam, who was comfortably ensconced up North, playing Texas Hold'em on Xbox Live when Alan logged on. I don't know if someone with a Silver account (the free version of Xbox Live) can audio-chat with friends, but it's a nice feature.

Around 11pm I decided that I'd better get on home, since I have been trying to assemble a presentation on Design Patterns for work. So anyway, thanks for inviting me, Tom. I hope we can get together again soon!