{"id":1191,"date":"2010-12-20T22:33:58","date_gmt":"2010-12-21T05:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/?p=1191"},"modified":"2010-12-20T23:08:49","modified_gmt":"2010-12-21T06:08:49","slug":"open-house-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2010\/12\/20\/open-house-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Open House 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Following our long-standing tradition (of three years now), we just had our annual holiday open house.  It&#8217;s a great excuse to see a bunch of people, many of whom we&#8217;d be too busy to see over the holidays otherwise. We had 48 people (by Kat&#8217;s count) this year, which is a solid turnout. I have posted <a href=\"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/gallery2\/2010\/open-house\/\">what pictures I have<\/a> (which are mostly of food).<\/p>\n<p>We have stuck pretty closely to the formula that seems to work: tell people to come whenever and make sure there&#8217;s a lot of food.  You&#8217;ll notice a lot of similarities between this list and <a href=\"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2008\/12\/21\/open-house-menu\/\">our list of food from 2008<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>The Food<\/h3>\n<p>Here is the food we had, with recipe\/supplier links where I have them to post.  Several of the links are to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cooksillustrated.com\/\">Cooks Illustrated<\/a>, which requires a subscription.  I vote that you pony-up and buy the subscription: I&#8217;ve rarely made anything from them that wasn&#8217;t awesome.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cooksillustrated.com\/recipes\/detail.asp?docid=7544\">deviled eggs (from Cooks Illustrated)<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2010\/12\/20\/the-meatball-recipe\/\">meatballs (from my mother&#8217;s recipe)<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Vegetarian Chili (from New Canadian Basics)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.foodnetwork.com\/recipes\/alton-brown\/the-shrimp-cocktail-recipe\/index.html\">Alton Brown\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Shrimp Cocktail<\/a> (with a half-strength brine)<\/li>\n<li>a side of salmon<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/artichoke-dip.png\">artichoke dip (from New Canadian Basics)<\/a> with pitas<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2008\/03\/17\/potato-salad-recipe\/\">potato salad (my recipe)<\/a><\/li>\n<li>various cold cuts, veggies, and fruit<\/li>\n<li>salami from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moccia.ca\/index1.html\">Moccia<\/a><\/li>\n<li>veggie and meat pockets from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goldenpita.ca\/\">Golden Pita<\/a><\/li>\n<li>various cheeses: some from local farmers markets, some from the grocery store<\/li>\n<li>various bread and crackers<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cooksillustrated.com\/recipes\/detail.asp?docid=14947\">blueberry pie (from Cook&#8217;s Illustrated)<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/cheesecake.png\">Caramel Macchiato Cheesecake<\/a> (a <a href=\"http:\/\/badgirlchocolates.com\/\">Bad Girl Chocolates<\/a> recipe)<\/li>\n<li>squares: triple-decker squares, lemon squares, butter tart squares<\/li>\n<li>cookies: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cooksillustrated.com\/recipes\/detail.asp?docid=4944\">chocolate chip<\/a>, chocolate-cherry rounds, speculaas, ginger cookies, and some sugar cookes (which were the only ones we bought)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.recipesource.com\/ethnic\/americas\/cajun\/candied-pecans1.html\">candied pecans<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2009\/06\/10\/trifle-recipe\/\">trifle (from my recipe)<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Commentary: The meatballs were a huge hit, so I have posted the recipe in <a href=\"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2010\/12\/20\/the-meatball-recipe\/\">a separate blog entry<\/a>.  I have rarely, if ever, made a better pie than those blueberry pies: I think I&#8217;m finally getting the touch for it.<\/p>\n<p>People drank a lot more pop and a lot less beer\/wine this year.  I have heard the same from another person who had a holiday party.  Maybe it&#8217;s the new drunk driving laws?  Worth keeping in mind if you&#8217;re entertaining in BC this season.<\/p>\n<h3>The Time Lapse<\/h3>\n<p>As before, I <a href=\"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2008\/12\/15\/time-lapse-movie\/\">set up a camera<\/a> on a tripod to take a picture every 30 seconds.  These (2000) pictures can then be stitched together into a <a href=\"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/gallery2\/2010\/open-house\/movie-big.avi.html\">time lapse video<\/a>, which tells the story of our day pretty completely, at 1:270 speed.  (<a href=\"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/gallery2\/d\/32503-2\/movie-big.avi\">direct link to the movie<\/a> if you&#8217;re having plugin problems)<\/p>\n<h3>The Next Day<\/h3>\n<p>On Sunday, it was Kat&#8217;s grandmother&#8217;s birthday.  It has become tradition that the grandchildren cook for that event.<\/p>\n<p>So, after cooking Friday for most of the day and all you see in the time lapse, we got up the next morning to drive to Surrey and make <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cooksillustrated.com\/recipes\/detail.asp?docid=21331\">indoor pulled pork<\/a> (with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cooksillustrated.com\/recipes\/detail.asp?docid=21332\">Lexington-style vinegar sauce<\/a>, and chopped not pulled as they do in the Carolinas).  And we fed another 24 people with that.<\/p>\n<p>Needless to say, we were both pretty bagged by the end of our weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following our long-standing tradition (of three years now), we just had our annual holiday open house. It&#8217;s a great excuse to see a bunch of people, many of whom we&#8217;d be too busy to see over the holidays otherwise. We had 48 people (by Kat&#8217;s count) this year, which is a solid turnout. I have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1191"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1206,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191\/revisions\/1206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}