Couch Potatoes Go South

I was elected to be the personal chef for my daughter's Super Bowl party.  There weren't going to be many of us, but we all liked to eat -- and we wouldn't want to spoil our attention to the game (or the commercials) by having to go sit down to dinner, so this was going to be an evening of Couch Potato Finger Food.

I decided on a kind of Latin American theme -- more or less.

We started off with home-made Guacamole, Salsa, and Chips.  I make my Guacamole the same way most of you do -- a lot of avocado, some onion and garlic, a little tomato and hot peppers, and some lime juice.  A few pulses of the blender and we're ready.

Sometimes we cheat and just mix spicy salsa into the chunks of avocado, pulsing it into a chunky dip.

Next came fried objects.  I made a vat of Picadillo (sauteed lean ground beef, onnions, and garlic with some diced boiled potatoes, chopped olives, and raisins.  We spiced it up with salt and pepper, tabasco, and a little diced pepper and cooked it with some beef broth.  (We made a lot because after we had filled enough empanadas you can eat the rest the next day over rice.)  Spoonfuls of the picadillo went into circles of dough, to be folded into half moons, with neatly pinched edges, and deep fried to golden brown in a big pot half-filled with hot vegetable oil.  You can make empanada dough from scratch; we used those tubes of refrigerator biscuits, rolling each biscuit out as thinly as possible.

We served the empanadas with a salsa made from diced mango, diced red onion (a little), and diced jalapeno peppers, plus a few spoonfuls of bottled medium salsa.

Next came the "main course" - skewered protein.  We had two kinds -- Buffalo Shrimp Kabobs were easy -- just big peeled shrimp and chunks of zucchini, onion, and red peppers, dipped in a mix of Frank's Hot Sauce and melted butter, and grilled.  Sticky Chicken Kabobs were chunks of boneless breast marinated (overnight) in a mixture of catsup, Dijon mustard, Worcestershire Sauce, Hot Sauce, and Honey, with a few crushed cloves of Garlic to pep things up.  They got skewered and grilled, too.

For dessert (later, much later) we had an assortment of cookies and little cakes, bought at the bakery.

You could offer this menu at any couch potato event with success -- with a few additions -- like some rice and salad to accompany tyhe main course and perhaps a big bowl of cut-up fruit to go with the dessert -- it could even be a Latin American buffet for more active guests.

Comments

[Susan]

Hi - I'm a medical writer in Narberth and working at an advertising agency. When I wanted to convince someone here that "enter the future" would be a better phrase than "change the future", I googled the first phrase and came up with a paper you wrote.
Then when I checked out your site, I saw that you lived in Narberth - do you still live there?

[Susan]

Hi - I'm a medical writer in Narberth and working at an advertising agency. When I wanted to convince someone here that "enter the future" would be a better phrase than "change the future", I googled the first phrase and came up with a paper you wrote.
Then when I checked out your site, I saw that you lived in Narberth - do you still live there?