Day: March 8, 2011

Grandpa Milo told me he and Grandma Sarah were on a diet so he did not want to eat too much when he came here to visit us.  We had all kinds of good intentions, but have been eating like maniacs ever since they arrived.  Last night we had a phenomenal dinner.  Grandpa Milo got some papaya and Roquefort cheese for a salad at Trader Joes.  Then he made up some of his famous candied walnuts.  He wanted Lorena to show him how she makes Orange Chicken, so they did and added it to the edges of the salad.  While she was at it, Lorena showed Grandpa Milo how she makes Kung Pao Chicken (Thank you Cousin Julia–it came from the book you gave me for Christmas!).  It not only tasted great, it LOOKED great, too.

I do not think we are going to do too much better tonight.  We are having some folks over for dinner for a last blowout before Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah return to Oregon tomorrow.  Lorena made up to big plates of flan, she is the queen of flan, and plans to make some brownies to go along with them.  Not to be out done, Grandpa Milo plans to make up some Carmel corn.  All of that is just for dessert.  We were looking at Troy and Youngin’s blog the other day and saw she had made blackened fish tacos with mango salsa.  Grandpa Milo has eaten Lorena’s fish tacos before, but never with the mango salsa, so that is what they decided to cook tonight.

The mangoes they bought at CostCo were sitting on the counter when Lorena made the comment that she only needed two of them for the salsa.  They looked so good that we decided to eat one.  That was no problem because, in his usual manner, Grandpa Milo bought enough mangoes to feed an army.  I was pretty amazed at how good he was at peeling an slicing the fruit off of the mango.  It turns out that he had gotten a lot of practice preparing mangoes when he was a cook in the army stationed on Eniwetok in the late 1940’s.  He explained he had used a lot of Roquefort cheese when he was there, too.  He would get big blocks of the stuff, let the outside of the block turn green, then serve it to the officers at the officer’s mess on crackers with their drinks.

You learn all kinds of fun stuff when Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah is around.  I will try to remember to write about the conversation Grandpa Milo had with John Woods about his “Madame Queen” at meeting on Sunday.