Round of 16, Day 2 - Switzerland and Canada - World Cup Eating Challenge

I spent most of Sunday morning debating between doing Canada or Switzerland. I ended up deciding on Canada. I knew I was going to be making Poutine and since I was going to be out with my friends, it seemed like a good post-drinking food.

I ran to the market to pick up fries and cheese curds... and then couldn't find cheese curds. I checked between the three cheese sections and couldn't find them anywhere.

Side note: do you ever notice how most markets these days have not one, not two, but THREE cheese sections??? THREE. It's pretty consistent too. You have the packaged cheeses (Kraft, Lucerne, etc), cooking/ salad/ snacking cheeses (mozzarellas, fetas, and bleus), and then the gourmet cheeses (Kerrygold, bries, etc). The sorting kind of varies from store to store, but the point is that when you can't find the cheese you're looking for, you have THREE places to look.

Anyways, in the process of looking for cheese curds, I ended up finding Swiss fondue cheese. I decided just to do both. I'd get some veggies for dipping in the fondue and then make the poutine as the main course with some high end Kerrygold cheddar instead of cheese curds.

The fondue mix was ok. I probably would just try to make my own next time but as I mentioned yesterday, I've had a hard week and I wanted to find ways to do the challenge without adding any un-needed stress. 

For dipping, I got cherry tomatoes, zucchini, mushrooms, and I heated up some leftover lamb. I bought some apples as well but totally forgot to cut them up. 

The poutine was a really easy and awesome dish as well. I baked some ready made fries, covered them in grated cheese, and then poured gravy on top. It was the perfect post drinking food and I'm really happy I bought extra fries so I can make these again some day.

Speaking of poutine - I had been joking with some friends that it was the only Canadian dish I could think of. They found this Wikipedia article... which proved that I wasn't too far off. To summarize, here are the top Canadian foods according to an informal survey:

1. Poutine (51%)
2. Montreal-style bagels (14%)
3. Salmon jerky (dried smoked salmon) (11%)
4. Perogy (10%)
5. Ketchup chips (7%)
6. Nova Scotian Donair (4%)
7. California roll (1%)

Looks like I picked a good dish to represent that country.

 Tomorrow we get back on track to more paleoish/ gluten free food and less getting by. 

Day 9 - Ecuador and Switzerland - World Cup Eating Challenge

Friday my friend Scott was coming over for dinner and copious amounts of wine so I was excited to find a fun dish to make. I also had a great plan for dessert. Pinterest has really been my crutch through all of this so I used it to try to nail down the night's dinner. I searched for Ecuadorian, Honduran, and Costa Rican recipes and came across one for Chicha Chicken that looked amazing.

The recipe recommended marinating the chicken in chicha sauce but I was unable to find any so I went with the back up plan of orange juice and white wine. I also decided to make some of the sides recommended. Plantains were an easy and clear choice. It also suggested mango or avocado so I made a little side salad of those fruits.

All of it was so delicious. I would definitely make that chicken again in a heart beat. Being Brazilian, fried plantains were pretty common in our house. My mom tended to make them with cinnamon and sugar and serve them as more of a dessert. I did season mine with a little cinnamon but they definitely were not sweet. They were actually amazing with a little bit of sea salt.

The "salad" was of course amazing. It's tough to go wrong with mango or avocado and it gave a real tropical feel to the dinner.

For dessert - I decided to do a little Swiss fondue. I'm pretty guilty of online impulse shopping and the fondue set was part of a flash sale that I had eagerly participated in. Even though I've had it for years, I've never used it so when I was thinking up a Swiss dish, I knew this would be perfect. We easily plowed through a bag of Enjoy Life chocolate chips and two packs of strawberries while drinking wine and watching Lost. It was definitely an amazing dinner and a really fun night.

Things got pretty weird after all that...