J's dining plan

One of the really fun things about going to Walt Disney World is the variety of restaurants and food choices.

Not many people know this better than J, who recently unveiled the awesome idea of having a Walt Disney World dinner party – a plan that came to fruition this past Saturday night.

Here’s the menu, along with the person responsible for recreating it:

Bill: Cheddar cheese soup and breadsticks (Le Cellier)

J and Deb: Mixed greens with a honey lime Dressing (‘Ohana)

J and Deb: Fried wontons served with peanut sauce (‘Ohana)

Carol and Randy: Seared beef with a wild onion sauce (Epcot Food & Wine Festival/Oklahoma)

Mike: Mom’s meatloaf (50s Primetime Café)

Walt: Bread pudding a la mode with a banana foster sauce (‘Ohana)

J and Deb: Peanut butter and jelly shakes (50s Primetime Café)

There are some talented cooks among this group of Walt Disney World enthusiasts. I am not among them. My cooking skills are incredibly limited.

Here’s my brief review:
- I thought the soup came out OK;
- The salad was awesome;
- The wontons with peanut sauce were my favorite thing all night;
- The seared beef blew my mind. The onion sauce was EXACTLY like it was at Epcot;
- The meatloaf was great. I haven’t had it at 50s Primetime, so I can’t say if it was exactly like it is at WDW, but it tasted great. In the incredibly gracious words of Walt: “He didn’t F-it up.” (Which means it was very good.)
- The bread pudding – I loved it. Even Randy the Bread Pudding King™ gave it two thumbs up. I must learn how to make this. However, I’d probably skip the Illuminations fire barge show associated with the sauce. (More on that later.)
- The peanut butter and jelly shakes were just as mind blowingly good as they are at the World.

As I arrived at J and Deb’s, the house was filled with music from Walt Disney World, pictures from a recent trip were showing on the TV, and the food smelled great. I knew it was going to be exactly what a WDW addict suffering from withdrawal needed.
I plugged in the crock pot with the soup and promptly forgot to turn it on. Yay me!

The most memorable moment came as Walt was making the bananas foster sauce for his bread pudding. He had the sauce over heat, and added rum. The column of flame that instantly shot up from the pan reached the high ceiling in the kitchen and remained there for several seconds. Thankfully, it burned off a bit. There were no black marks on the ceiling, but memories of the close call reflected in Deb’s face. It was a look of horror mixed with “don’t burn my house down.”

Personally, I think it added a bit of a floor show to the proceedings. (In retrospect and due to the fact nothing was damaged, of course.)

By the end of the night we had great Disney talk, a showing of old pictures, full bellies and the Red Sox crushed the Indians on the way to a game 7 comeback.

J and Deb were, as always, amazing hosts. I hope we can do something like it again some time.