Here's the News You Can Use....From today's intimate Memorial Day Picnic for about 22 Seattle Republican adults and bloggers, and about 10 kids, at our family's palatial (uh, sorta, in it's own way) West Seattle manse, which - if you're standing in the right room or on the right deck, gazes fondly upon the Olympic Mountains and The Puget Sound, or else, depending on exactly where you're situated, a leafy green expanse adjacent to (a neighbor's simulated) babbling brook. (Pride of ownership, can't help it).

While Rare Groove, World Jams, and Jazz issued forth onto the lower rear deck from customized playlists on my gleaming new, wafer-thin, mega-deep, ultra-sexy Apple iMac G5, a whole bunch of really great folks talked and talked and talked. And FYI, no one was sporting iPod isolation-tank headphones. Topics included politics, food, travel, hiking, child-rearing, families, and the Northeastern liberals who relocate to Seattle and pervert the political discourse with their censorious extremism. For laughs there was the pic in the paper of the Ghost Of Wavy Gravy at Folklife.

We scarfed up:

salad of spinach, feta, zucchini, squash, red bell peppers, red onion, carrots and broccoli;

two different kinds of hummus, with pita;

baked stuffed mushrooms;

a salad of crisp corn kernels and sweet onions;

Granny Smith Apple Slaw, with Merlot-marinated red onions (Brendan, Yo!);

a beguiling picnic-chilled dish of perfectly breaded, just-crispy, bite-sized boneless chicken pieces, faintly drizzled with a provocative sweet-and-sour-sauce (whoa, it all disappeared fast!);

Lean Chinese BBQ Pork, smoked via the indirect method on the Weber Grill - but first marinated 27 hours in equal parts soy and sugar, with contemporaneous infusions of Chinese cooking wine, ginger, garlic, and lemon grass;

thin-pounded chicken breasts marinated in the same heady brew;

Scott's muy speciale teriyaki chix kebabs;

"Thermonuclear Salsa" that turned out to be not quite THAT hot, made from peaches, Rainier cherries, Habanero peppers, fresh mint, lime juice, and salt. Thanks to my marvellous Max-i-Boy for the customized warning sign, as requested....with his own highly evocative depiction of the envisioned before-and-after Thermonuclear Salsa user-experience. My attorney thanks you, Max.....no, wait a minute, these were Republicans, they wouldn't have sued, they would have taken personal responsibility for any Habanero-related distress, just like I did this morning when putting in my contact lenses after handling Habaneros

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at May 30, 2005 11:26 PM

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