The Amazing Get-Together Part 1...

January 6, 2005

The Get-Together

I was invited to have a small get-together dinner with Adrian, Nabs, and Gary, at my sister Leslie's place in San Juan. I was asked to come early to help Leslie out with the cooking. Cool.

The Amazing Race San Juan Edition

Had to rush to pick up my sister and bring her to Unimart to buy the casserole and some potato chips and be back at her house to cook with two hours remaining before the guests were expected to arrive. Knowing it will be a tight schedule, we had to quickly find a parking space, withdraw at an ATM and go to Unimart on the other side of the mall and be back with enough time to finish cooking dinner. We had to hoof it. The whole shopping experience felt like an Amazing Race Brother-Sister edition. It was a good thing too because the get-together started earlier than expected since everyone arrived quite on time.

The Making of Pochero and the Discussion on Manticado Ice Cream

POCHERO RICO

Ingredients (Serves 2-3persons):
1/2 kilo beef
4 cups water
2 pcs medium onion, cut into wedges
4 cloves garlic
1 small can tomato sauce
2 pcs Knorr Beef Cubes
1/2 cup sugar
2 pcs each saging na saba, potatoes, eggplant
1/8 kilo baguio beans
1 pc small cabbage, cut into wedges
1 bunch pechay

Procedure: Boil beef in water with one sliced onion and a few pieces of pamintang buo until tender. In separate pan, saute garlic, one sliced onion, tomato sauce and Knorr Beef Cubes. Add sugar and broth from the boiled beef. Bring to a boil then add saging na saba, potatoes, eggplant, baguio beans, small cabbage and pechay. Add meat, bring to a boil and serve. Then see your friends enjoy it so much, they'll ask for seconds.

The pochero was great! Mental note in probably putting the pechay last and that the sauce needed a tad bit more tomato sauce. Nonetheless, the group still gave the dish high marks.

Dessert was manticado ice cream. A brief discussion ensued on what could possibly be the difference between Manila Vanilla and French Vanilla and it's possible relation to Milli Vanilli.

Much was discussed during dinner on a wide range of topics, topics so diverse and so unrelated to one another that I got everything mixed up. Adrian was on a roll with what we fondly termed as his "National Geographic Moments" on world history and board games.

Killing Dr. Lucky, Video Clips and Sleeping Over

It was my first time to be actually part of this get-together, which usually involves dinner, some conversation and playing the board game of the day. This time, it's a game called Kill Doctor Lucky by Cheapass Games. It looked daunting at first, but we had fun once we got bolder in our assassination attempts (Dr. Lucky turned out to be a slippery little sucker) and the failure cards got fewer. Gary won convincingly and everybody had a great laugh at all the foiled assassination attempts. I gotta get me one of these.

My brother-in-law Barry arrived from an office event later that evening and was able to help entertain the guests. We looked at some movie previews of big-name movies due to show in the next couple of months as well as some funny clips here and there.

Time flew fast and guests had to go. I was scheduled to sleep over at my sister's place since I also helped out in the cleaning up, which was a lot! Can't wait for the next get-together...