Aprons and hairnets make the man

Romanian/Moldovan food is generally healthful and yummy, not super spicy, but with lots of good flavor. There are a few weird fish dishes we stay away from (those eyes in aspic get me every time!) but our friends know that and don't make the hardcore dishes for the uninitiated. So imagine our consternation when we were assigned to make lasagna for forty people last week. Lasagna. From people who never even eat lasagna.

What were we to do? We had no choice, we had to call in our good buddy, Mr. Kirkland, otherwise known as Bro. Costco. With funds donated by someone who wants to remain anonymous, we bought the lasagnas as the base and filled it all in with a little of this, a little of that - a Romanian/Moldovan/Italian/American meal.

After baking the frozen lasagnas for two long hours and willing my rice cooker to finish up the brown rice, I brought half my kitchen over to the Garfield KH. My trusty helpers and I went to work in getting it all set up. And then came trickling in the rest of the homemade Moldovan food.  I had a few of those "we're going to run out, we're going to run out" moments, but we just made it and had enough for all.

Because it was a catered type thing, we had to wear hairnets - those awful kind that look like part of a bad toupee. I sucked up my pride and put one on. The verdict is in - I'm a person who needs bangs. I brought four cute aprons and we picked out which we wanted to wear to distract from the hairnets. Laura chose the Guinea Pig one, Elvina the Italy one, and I wore the blue one my sister Janice made. We very selfishly left the most feminine and silly one for poor Artur. He wore it like a man.

Laura arranging the "placentes," more pleasantly called savory stuffed pastries.

We kept the menu generic, because telling people you're serving placentes is kind of gross. 

We all had a laugh when someone came up after and asked if she could get the recipe for Galina's sos (pronounce like a Brooklyn person saying sauce) online. Oh, how funny is that? Her daughter doesn't even know how Galina makes it. Another person there with a catering business thinks the placentes would go over great with Americans. Now to come up with a better name...

Artur, Raisa, Laura, Elvina, Needs Bangs and Vaceslav.