WIAW #5: eating for a hurricane

As most of you probably know, Hurricane Sandy hit the northeast a couple days ago. As you also know from m last entry, I've been in Disney World. And wouldn't you know, the hurricane cancelled my flight, and I'm stuck here in Disney for an extra 2 days (which means I'm going to miss Halloween- kind of like last year!)

Gee, darn. I know! ha. So this week's What I Ate Wednesday is more Disney food. Although to be honest, I'll probably be eating eggs and toast for the first few days that we're home, so I'd probably share Disney food this week anyway.

One problem with extending our vacation (aside from the fact that the weather has turned super cold here and we don't have any of our toasty warm New England fall clothes with us) is that it's another 2 days of seemingly unlimited food. I'm getting very scared of what the scale will say when I get home! At least I'm now used to more exercise from all the walking we're doing, so I'll be more likely to increase my exercise at home, and I know I'll be glad to return to my normal diet. Only eating restaurant food gets to me after a few days.

Breakfast:
Cherry danish, Clint's choice. This was actually my favorite bun of the whole week! I had my usual decaf coffee with skim (well, 1% at Disney, they don't have skim here) milk and Clint had half a cup of black coffee- very unusual for him, but we couldn't find any tea bags or hot water (the hide the teabags now, I guess people used to swipe them. Not that I ever did, oh no.) As with every Disney bun, we split it.

 Over breakfast, I gazed lovingly at my new cookbook, purchased at Animal Kingdom the day before. I know, who buys cookbooks at Disney World? This girl! All the napkins you see stuck in it are marking recipes I can't wait to try. I didn't think to bring my tabbies on this trip, since I didn't bring along any Cooking Lights that'd need tabbifying, and I certainly didn't expect to buy a cookbook here.

 Then we moseyed on over to Epcot. I have to say, we've been exceptionally lazy this trip. I'm not sure if we were tired to start with, or worrying about the hurricane is taking its toll, or we're just getting old (boooo), but there are some days we didn't show up to the park until after 10!!!  Usually we try to be there in time to witness the opening show (failed at that so far, but it's been partly because the buses are super slow lately). However, if we're late, it means the food festival might be open when we walk by- we're now staying at the Boardwalk Resort, which means we can walk to Epcot but we enter at the International Gateway, not the main entrance, so we have to wait through the World Showcase (where the food fest is) which doesn't open til 11.

This particular day, we were late, so Clint grabbed an Irish Coffee as we passed Ireland. It's iced coffee (sweetened and milkified somehow) with potcheen added. Potcheen is apparently some ridiculously strong spirit made from barley and malt (which makes me think beer-like, but Clint says vodka) that you can't actually sell IN Ireland, it's only for export. You can taste that this coffee was alcoholic, but as I never sweeten my coffee, all I could really taste was the sugar. Still tasty, however!

Our lunch reservations were for 2pm, so we had a little second breakfast at noon.


Chicken souvlaki from Greece and a glass of moscofilero. I think I need this pita recipe, my pitas are good but definitely not like these! Also? Clint seems to have a change of heart regarding tzatziki! On one hand, yay! On the other hand... I may have to share my tzatziki in the future :(

We had lunch in France, where I enjoyed a very decadent Croque Monsieur

and Clint had a chicken florentine crepe (mine was better ;) )

I had a bite of my mom's mango sorbet (she dug in before I could photograph! oops)

Then we wandered. Our plan was to do one of the wine seminars, since we'd already done one and really enjoyed it (3 wine samples, probably about 3/4-1oz each, then someone from the winery talks about the wine), so Dad offered to run over to the food fest HQ and buy the tickets, but we did not consider the massive crowds that day, so all the wine seminars for the rest of the day and the next day were already sold out. Oops! So we went to the different countries, watched the France movie, and then once we'd digested lunch, we started in on more food- we'll call it "dinner" but it's a very loose term in this case.

Clint and I split everything, more or less equally.

We skipped dessert at the French restaurant so that we could try the baklava from Morocco. So good! I'm not sure why I spent so many years of my life thinking I didn't like baklava.

 Now, the food fest has passport books, where you can go to each booth and get a stamp. When you get all the stamps, you can go to the HQ for a completer stamp. Oooh! Yes, I mean like an inkpad kind of stamp, really unexciting. But we take this seriously. So at the Fife & Drum (which is actually a permanent snack booth at Epcot, so I always think it's a little odd that they join in the food fest, even with their usual coke products and turkey legs), we'd planned to only get a stamp- the special food fest menu additions were 2 frozen drinks using Red Stag whiskey. But I was thirsty and it was like 5pm by this point so I figured I'd try the frozen Red Stag lemonade. To my complete surprise, it was actually tasty! Also my most expensive food fest purchase at $9. It reminded me a lot of my Vermontucky Lemonade, just without the maple. I may not have shared this completely equally with my husband.

 Potato pierogi and kielbasa at Poland. I had the pierogi last year, but I don't remember that it had kielbasa with it. The pierogi was just as good as I remembered, and the kielbasa was, as kielbasa always is, delicious. The caramelized onions were a nice addition! As much as I like sour cream, I could have done without it in this dish.

 One of our favorites: beef empanada with Malbec. I think Clint was most excited about the empanada of all the things available (except maybe the chipotle chicken sausage from Canada, since that really is the best thing at the food fest), and it did not disappoint. I need to get this pastry recipe, when I've done empanadas the pastry is always more like pie crust, but this was not as buttery, and had almost a yeast-raised texture to it.

 I got the malbec because that's kind of a joke at work now- we get a lot of people in asking for malbecs, which, correct me if I'm wrong, don't often come from MA. We just don't have the climate for that varietal. One day a rather rude customer came in looking for a malbec. He grabbed a bottle of Chrystleton, which is elderberry and apple, and totally NOT in any way like a malbec (incidentally, I'm about the only employee that likes the Chrystleton, and now I get made fun of for it. Oh well, more for me!). He harassed many of us (luckily, not me) and everyone was so disgusted we still remember malbec guy. So I felt I should have a malbec.

We missed the wine seminar, but you don't need to sign up for free sampling! We tried Troy & Sons whiskey from Ashville, NC. I tried the normal colored stuff, Clint tried the clear stuff. I don't know the difference between them, but my non-whiskey drinker self could almost drink the whiskey-colored stuff but not the clear stuff.

They've been handing out free Ghirardelli milk chocolate caramel squares at the food fest HQ... so we're averaging one a day (each!).

 Back to the food! Beef filet with braai sauce (what is that? besides delicious. I need a recipe) and smashed potatoes with a glass of pinotage. I need to go back for a second helping of this beef filet before we leave!

From China, chicken satay. We were going to skip China and just get the stamp (since I generally don't like Chinese food, except for potstickers, which we had at lunch a few days before), but I saw some guy walking around with this so I wanted to try it. It was good! The chicken was cooked nicely, was not greasy, and the peanut sauce was quite tasty. It came with pickled cucumbers and mango. Of course, this is more Thai than Chinese... oh well.

 Another of our favorites, ropa vieja and frozen cherry lemonade (with Bacardi rum) from the Caribbean. So good! It's shredded beef in a slightly spicy, super tasty sauce. The olives add a sharp brininess that I love. The rice wasn't exciting but went well with the beef. And the cherry lemonade was kind of amazing... and I was nice and let Clint have most of it.

 Then it was time for dessert! At Champagne and Desserts we couldn't decide which to try, so we got the trio (which also saves 75 cents- $1.50 for each or $3.75 for all 3). Yogurt panna cotta with mango and raspberry purees, lemon custard with blueberry compote, and chili chocolate mousse with salted caramel sauce. I ate most of the panna cotta and I gave Clint the lemon custard (I like lemon but he  loooves lemon) and we fought over the chili chocolate mousse. We are both huge fans of the chili-chocolate combo!

 We did our best to lick the cups clean. It's too bad the spoons are so big compared to the cups, it's hard to get those last little bits!

And now you can see why I'm afraid of the scale! Well, my khaki capris still fit, and they're my big indicator of weight changes. My weight goal is my wedding weight (8lbs to go, as of the day we left for this trip), and I wore these khaki capris that summer, but not the next summer. To balance out all the food, we're walking a lot. I wanted to keep Clint's Nike running app on all day (since our pedometer is broken), but he said it eats up too much battery. On previous trips, we've always taken the boat to Epcot or Hollywood Studios, but this time we walked. It's about 1.5km to Hollywood Studios from our hotel and about the same to The Land, which is where we usually go first thing in Epcot, to ride Soarin'. And it's 1.3 miles around the World Showcase (not counting Futureworld at all) and we did that loop at least 1.5 times each day we went to Epcot, plus all the back and forth to the food fest HQ. Our favorite ride (Soarin'), which we go on twice a day, involves a half mile of walking (a cast member told me that). And that feels like nothing compared to all the other walking, so... again, I really wish our pedometer was working! Or that I could estimate distances better. This is the first year I've chosen to wear my sneakers (the year I had a bad bone bruise and my doctor demanded I wear sneakers doesn't count) most of the time, so my feet don't really hurt- until today, when I agreed to take the boat and had to wait about 15 minutes for it to show up. I'm just walking from now on! I would have been to our destination before the boat even arrived if I'd just walked.

Next week's WIAW will showcase homemade food! I'm already kind of done with restaurant food, I want something I make myself! Something like... fish kibbe from the cookbook above ;)