Hostess to the Mostess

Apologizes for the long delay in posting. With Drews back mending and myself getting over a cold, we have been like the walking dead over here, so there was little to post. we did mange to watch all 3 seasons of Avatar, the Last Airbender, an awesome cartoon series from a few years ago. Having a movie marathon every now and again is a good thing in my opinion. The show has a lot of Asian influence, so it was really cool to see things in the show that i now better understand. For instance, at one point, Ang, the main character, starts to drool over an egg tart. Aha! I've had those before! They also discuss many types of tea, jasmine, ginseng, etc.

Drew and I had our second successful dinner party last night with Drew's old coworker Pavel, the Australian Andrew we meet a few weeks ago, and Andrew's mom. Drew made a version of chicken lettuce wraps, which were a slam dunk despite his concern of substituting celery for water chestnuts. I made a soy sauce, peanut butter noodle dish, which is always a safe favorite. Te conversation was great, and I want to share a couple highlights. First, the Mom, a Sri Laken who has lived in Auzzie for 25 years, commented how Americans, in general, are better public speakers than other countries, obviously a nod to Drew. We developed a theory that younger countries, like the US, have always had to prove themselves to their older, more established neighbors, like Italy for example. Nobody has to sell the value of a pure margarita pizza. It was good 500 years ago, it's going to be good now. Now a hot dog, on the other hand, may take some convincing, hence public speaking skills.

The other thing she mentioned was how a lot of Sri Lanken food is "disrespectful" to the ingredients because they cover it up a lot with tons of spices, curries in particular. They may be because they always had to use subpar meats and fishes, so they overcome lack of quality with lots of flavor. It's an interesting concept though. When was the last time you really tasted an ingredient, say a fish, by itself, appreciating exactly what flavor it brought before dumping other unnecessary things on there?

Somehow, Drew convinced this lady that we needed to try her home cooking, so she and Andrew will be coming over again next week to show us how to cook real Sri Laken food. Score! Nothing beats homemade cooking from a mom. They will be making curried lentils using a tempering technique and a cuddle fish dish in a clay pot. I'll be sure to post about it. The last pic is an actual cuddle fish.

And about the title, Drew was really the host to the most, but that doesn't sound as good....