Hi it's me

The clock is really ticking now, it seems. The rest of my weekends are basically booked and in a mere 37 days I depart for the glory that is Iberia. Christopher finally booked his flight, so we will most certainly be enjoying a 9 day "lovers' last call", if you will, on the East Coast of Spain between Barcelona, Valencia, and Alicante. *Sigh*

Things have been busy - I suppose I'm subconsciously trying to cram everything in before I leave. Last weekend was our fun weekend in P-Town with Matt to visit Alex. The weather was absolutely perfect and we spent most of our time leisurely strolling up and down Commercial Street - that is, when we weren't boozing. The exaggerated presence of bears made for some interesting people watching. It's so funny how you can see a man who, alone on the street, would based on his looks kick your ass for being a poof, but then in P-Town be holding hands with an equally butch man and talking in this high-pitched gay tone. It was great to finally be able to go out in P-Town after having been there with my family so many times over the years. The most fun was probably A-House, which was more or less a sex den. Somehow I found myself dancing shirtless, which I NEVER do.

oh wonderful - i just spilled coffee all over my white shorts

Anywho...this Tuesday we put on a North African Dinner Feast chez Bo for Matt, Kevin, Mel, Lauren, Bryan, and Peter. The night before, Bryan and I had made homemade baklava, as well as pick up a number of things like Muhammara and pita for appetizers. I was incredibly nervous seeing as normally with these international dinners Bryan does most of the cooking. This time all the main dishes were on me. It took 3 or 4 hours for everything to come together but I think we did a decent job. Let's have a review of the menu, shall we? While the main theme was North Africa, we did have some things from our friends in Armenia for appetizers.


apéritif 1- vodka, pomegranate, mint, seltzer concoction a la Bobo
apéritif 2- sherry, both cream and dry
appetizers - hummus, muhammara (2 types), lahmajoun, kibbeh, metch, tsatsiki, and pita
main dishes - bastilla, lamb tagine, vegetable cous cous
dinner drinks - heineken (best-selling beer in N.Africa) and white wine
dessert - date rolls, homemade baklava
dessert drinks - turkish coffee with cardamom, moroccan mint tea

The evening closed with hookah and drinks on the porch before the last guests left around 1am. I'm now planning the next evening of international delight and going back to my roots with Slavic cuisine. I'm just unsure what I want to do - doing East, West, and South Slavic cuisine presents the problem of a huge spectrum of dishes that may not go well together. Doing just East and West cuts out the food I have the most experience in preparing myself, Bulgarian. I may just end up with Polish, but in Boston that's annoying bc I have to drive to Belmont to actually get to a non-Russian deli.

Decisions decisions...