Fondue

I feel like every weekend (or post weekend) post starts off with “I was damaged or I could barely see I was so hung-over”; and, although I hate to be redundant, redundancy reigns. I had planned to write about this yesterday, but my friends and I had a fondue party on Friday evening; and, us being us, we got out of control.

Things started rather innocently, we decided to have a fondue party, and stay low-key; famous last words. My responsibility was the cheese, which cost me $27.00. I bought 2 bottles of wine and waited excitedly for my friends to pick me up and take me to the party. Upon our arrival at the party I noticed that everyone had brought minimum 2 bottles of booze. I knew right then and there that trouble was brewing; the fun at the moment kind of trouble, that makes me hate myself for the whole next day.

My cheese fondue was a bust; the cheese separated from the wine and left this blobby curdle-y mess. It was delicious cheese but as a fondue, it was a failure. My friend Katie, however, was responsible for the triumph of the evening; she made this amazingly delicious bulgogi beef that merited a round of applause, which is exactly what we gave her.

As much fun a fondue can be, with its potluck style assembly and hands on approach to cooking and eating, I realize why they fell out of favor; it’s a lot of standing around and waiting for the smallest piece of meat to cook, it takes forever to feel full. My friend Sarah said the line of the night; she looks at everyone and says very matter of factly “so we should all have 2 sticks”. She was right; it requires a minimum of 2 sticks to even make it worth it. I ate before I got there, anticipating this little conundrum, but most people didn’t and it was starting to get hardcore. People started to question whose stick was whose, we began making fondue kebabs to make the wait worthwhile and even the suggestion that we fire up a skillet and screw the fondue was brought forth.

Once we started to get our fondue stride, the oil was running low; and we had nothing but canola oil left. They say that canola oil is no good to use, due to the nasty smell it gives of when heated. We decided to try anyways; turns out “they” know what they are talking about. The house started to reek, so we put the kibosh of that. We then decided to send out some troops to go and locate some grape seed oil. FAIL, as it was 11:30 and nothing was open. We are fondue novices and this was our trial run; next time we will be more than ready. At this point with no oil, crappy cheese and bottles upon bottle of wine, we decided it was time to begin drinking the copious amounts of alcohol; if we couldn’t eat, we were going to drink. That when things get blurry and extremely ridiculous; and this is a post about fondue, not about twentysomethings being extremely excessive, so I will spare you.

Long story, somewhat short, despite many hiccups, fondue was fun. I hope we do it again soon.