The Barry Table

It's about food, sure, but just like Barry tables across Chicago and around the country, this is also a place to share ideas, make plans for family reunions and boast about recent accomplishments, food-related or not.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

FOOD PWNAGE

Alright Tesla cat, you ask for food? I will give you food! The following pictures are dating from quite a while back. we amassed food pictures from, ah, lets say August? They are mostly unrelated and there are a whole lot of them, so brace yourself for about a page of mind-blasting food colour. Ah. BUT OF COURSE. the evil computer monster (he eats pictures) is being ornery today and refuses to give me the pictures I want. So I suppose you'll have to make do with this:



Hmm. what looks like a huge, delicious omelet. ah, yes. a frittata, perhaps? we will never know. but what we do know was that this was made with blood red tomatoes, dripping in juice, snappy red bell peppers, filled with the tang and sweetness on the level of a albatross, topped with crumbly feta cheese fresh out the cow. (not). beat that for good writing.

And here is the Barry table on the grill. That's fresh eggplant and chicken marinated in honey and soy sauce marinade. For those who look past the flesh of animals with a hankering for fruits of veggies, you'll have to do with the eggplant.



Ah, the leeks, the leeks. these leeks are positioned conveniently an top of the chicken as to not burn them, but I say, let them be burned!! Adds texture.



and the completed masterpiece. grilled chicken, leeks and onions,eggplants, a hot corn salad...of some sort... mango's and pineapple, and last but definitely not least, grilled bread brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt from the black magma rocks of Hawaii.
as said in the title:



FOOD PWNAGE


hahahah.
-Grace


















Thursday, November 13, 2008

It's ON Grace, ON like Donkey-Kong!


Well Grace, if you just want some stupid food, I can tell you about stupid food. See, though it might get boring once in a while, us cats are simple creatures. We wake up, make a little noise, our pet human gets up and fetches us some delicious food, it might be the same food day after day, but it's always delicious and doesn't require any work on my part. But humans, those are funny creatures. Instead of just eating some ready-made cat food, they have to talk about what to make, take trips to the store to get ingredients, make a big mess, and then eat something funny. My humans, who normally try to make Chinese dishes have been on an American food kick lately. Now that is some stupid food. Let's start with Pizza, specifically the pizza that Kevin and Li-yi made while they could've been napping like me.

Baby corn and avocado, with tomato sauce and Trader Joe's basil pizza dough? As if that weren't weird enough, they also make a second pizza with asparagus, mushrooms of every kind, and funny colored peppers. If I were to make a pizza, it'd have cat grass dough, no tomato sauce, and extra cat kibbles on top. Forget the vegetables.
But no american food is complete without some pie. Now i'm not talking about catnip pie or something delicious, i'm talking about pumpkin pie. Pumpkins are supposed to sit outside and look silly, not be eaten. But humans, they just don't understand these things, so they cut up a pumpkin and cooked it and blended it and cooked it again and eventually came up with one of these. I took a sniff of it, then lost interest and took a nap. By the time I woke up they'd eaten it all. Humans...

But now if you want really weird food, you have to skip their American nights and check out their Chinese nights. One night they're making something called "Goo-da", which sounds pretty good to me. That is until I saw them making it. Why would you name a dish after the word "Good" if it's got zucchini in it? Beats me. But they put some zucchini in some kind of dough, and put the whole thing into a soup. Towards the end of the meal they still had like 7 "good" balls left and Kevin said he'd eat 5 of them. That perked my interested as if it's really that good maybe I should try some (I'd already eaten all my food anyway). But Kevin's eyes are bigger than his stomach and he only ate one of the "good" balls before giving up.


Then another night, Li-yi takes a bunch of mushrooms and chops their tails off (Ouch!). She then prepares some kind of tofu-pepper mix and stuffs it back into the mushroom. I have to admit, the final result was pretty beautiful, but it still doesn't hold a candle to a fresh bowl of Science Diet Light for Cats (I prefer the flavor of Light, it's not because I'm on a diet).


Well that's about all the stupid food I can think of at the moment. What have you been eating lately Grace? I highly recommend the Science Diet Light for Cats if you are looking for something new.

Everyone's Favorite Cat,
-Tesla

Saturday, November 8, 2008

3 MONTHS

ITS BEEN 3 MONTHS POST SOME FOOD!





HOWS THAT FOR DELICIOUS?

POST SOME STUPID FOOD!




MADE EXCLUSIVLEY BY GRACE

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Two Short Summer Vacations

Warm summer nights. Swimming. Not logging on.

I took two wonderful, albeit short vacations -- to Washington, D.C., to visit Sean (and my friend Mark), and to Los Angeles, to meet up with Nanette, who was working down there -- and now I'm back to the fog and sitting inside all day in front of a computer monitor. But they were great while they lasted.

Here are several photos of each trip. First is Sean in front of Great Falls on the Potomac, just north of D.C., then there are a couple of shots of us "swimming" and wading in the two-foot deep White Oak Canyon Creek in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. And then there's Sean in front of the DNC, a few blocks from the Capitol.

Then there's Nanette and me with from Runyon Canyon, up in the Hollywood Hills, walking distance from where we were staying with her friend David. The last shot is downtown L.A. from this canyon.

There are plenty more photos on Flickr -- DC | LA












Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Mom's visit and June Lake

Mom, a.k.a. Granny, came west last week for a short visit to the Barry compound in Berkeley, California. We scheduled a little backyard barbecue on Saturday afternoon, and then when Billy Prendergast said he couldn't make it, we hosted another small gathering on Sunday morning. Here are some photos -- this first one is mom with Tim Rooney.



And here she is with Nanette, Billy, and Diane (Billy's wife).



There are more here on Flickr of mom's visit:
http://flickr.com/photos/johnbyrnebarry/sets/72157606320344929/show/

And then after I dropped mom off at the airport, I left for Yosemite and June Lake with Nanette and her kids. Here's a couple of photos from that trip -- first the Tuolomne River in Yosemite...



And here's Lee with the brown trout he caught in June Lake. (This was the first time I'd ever experienced the catching, scaling, filleting, cooking, and eating of a fish. Very tasty.)



And Elena on horseback. (Lee and I went mountain bike riding --sans camera -- while Nanette and Elena rode horses.)



There are a lot more on Flickr.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Four Days Unplugged on Mt. Tam -- With Cake

For the 4th of July weekend, while some Barry family members were enjoying a Peruvian wedding in Chicago, Nanette and her kids and I went up to Mt. Tam for four nights at the West Point Inn, with no electricity or internet access. July 5 was Lee's birthday and on Sunday, we had about twenty people hike up the mountain (about a 45 minute hike) for a birthday brunch. Since this is primarily a food blog, I'll start with the chocolate angel food cake Elena baked from scratch for her brother, with chocolate chips spelling out "15 Lee."

We took a hike every day, and played a lot of hearts. This might not be a bad idea for a family reunion site, though we probably would want to do it for three or four nights, as opposed to a whole week.

I'm also attaching some photos of the view of the bay from the mountain -- mostly we're above the fog.









Here are some more photos from Mt. Tam:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnbyrnebarry/sets/72157606062183882/

and my garden:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnbyrnebarry/sets/72157606065566447/

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Wedding bells at a Peruvian restaurant


Ray and Edith got married on July 4th. Pat and I have been helping by printing signs, locating and purchasing Peruvian wine and beer and other small tasks. Janet, Kevin and Carolyn joined us along with Ray, Edith and Edith's family with the pre-wedding set-up. We arranged the patio, decorated the restaurant, stripped roses for the petals and hung a piƱata.

We were all taking notes, thinking about Janet and Freddy’s wedding in November. I’ve been considering taking the week before their wedding off, now I’m contemplating taking the entire month of November off! Just kidding, but there are so many details to be taken care.

Ray and Edith got married at Ay Ay Picante, a Peruvian Restaurant on Elston. The restaurant had never hosted a wedding before. The owner Jamie and his staff went all out to create a welcoming venue and wonderful food.

The best parts of the wedding for me were getting a new sister in-law, having kids home, spending time with Margo and Gabriel, talking with my cousin Dean and his wife Jane, and seeing Selso, an old friend and Gabriel’s brother. Below are some photos.


Janet, Mary Anne, Carolyn and Kevin.

Margo, Pat and Sandra with Jane and Dean in the second roll.

Edith and Ray cut the cake. Yes that's wheat grass surrounding the cake.

What's a wedding without Peruvian dancers?