October 3 - California Dinner

Mike and Marnie stayed with us for the night and they organized a California dinner at our house for their friends. Everyone was expected to bring something and there would be prizes for the best Californian dish. You were asked to write up a little something on the dish you brought and we voted after dinner for the winners.

We were 11 people in total and dinner worked out wonderfully - great company, and delicious California food, and a perfect mix of appetizers, main dishes and dessert. Here are some of the dishes we had:

• Crab dip in sourdough bread bowl
• California platter of raisins, olives, cheese and almonds
• BBQ'ed oysters with homemade BBQ sauce
• Smoky eggpland/red pepper spread
• Goat cheese and fig pizza
• Tri-tip
• Sharfen Berger chocolate truffles dusted with real gold

We entered the tri-tip into the contest. These were 2 tri-tips from Costco marinated for 24 hours (48 hours is the ideal) in beer, Yoshida's Gourmet Sauce, garlic and dry mustard (optional). We BBQed the meat for a total of 19 minutes (6 minutes flip, 6 minutes flip, 5 minutes, 2 minutes). Our write up explained that these were happy California cows for the California Atkins crowd. We came in second place for best California dish, and came in first for taste!