Iron Chef and Avocado Pie

A few years back I belonged to what you might call a Supper Club...kinda. A true supper club is usually in a restaurant and a special clientele go there on a certain night and dine together.

What we did was more awesome than that. My friends, Stacie, Donna, Brian and I were sitting around one evening and as always the conversation rolled around to food. We came up with an idea of choosing one ingredient and everyone making some type of dish using that ingredient and then we would choose a winner and the winner would have to host the same type of party the following week.

The first ingredient we did was Wine. You had to make any kind of dish but it had to have wine as the main ingredient.

So for the rest of the week we each invited more friends and told them what the premise of our little competition was and what the ingredient was and asked them to join in. When the weekend rolled around we had a really great little group of around 15 or so people and each brought a different dish.

Some of the dishes were main courses, some were desserts and so on. The best thing is that since the theme was Wine everyone brought a bottle of wine and we all shared. The food was all great! Stacie had set up a nice little buffet table with plates and everything we would need. She had marked each dish with a number so we didn't know who had brought what. She had also provided little pieces of paper that we could all write a new favorite ingredient on and it was tossed in a hat.

We all served ourselves and enjoyed the great food and voted on which dish we liked the best. Then the votes were tallied and a winner was chosen. (It wasn't me...I'll tell you right now...I never won *sigh*). The winner then chose one of the ingredients out of the hat and that was to be the ingredient for the next month! The winner also had to host the Iron Chef Party the following month at their house.

This thing snowballed! By the time the next Iron Chef Party rolled around more people had heard about it and they showed up with their dishes. Again more great food, wine, beer, mixed drinks and lots of fun, laughter and making of new friends. And again a new winner was crowned, and by now someone had introduced a big plastic crown that looked like the Burger King Crown only of course plastic with big plastic gems in it. It was awesome and we all envied the winner!

We did this for about 6 to 8 months and it just kept getting bigger. The last one I remember going to had as it's ingredient avocado. Now...lemme tell ya; I make the best guacamole in the world. Not being braggadocio here, just telling it like it is. But did I make Guacamole? No. Did I win? No. Would I have won with my world famous amazing Guacamole? Hmmm, maybe, but I got greedy ya see...I wanted to make something BIG something no one else would bring.

So I thought...what would be the oddest thing to find avocado in? Anyone? That's right...pie. Ok, so it would be odd in cookies too, but let's go with the pie cause that's what I did. I baked an Avocado Pie!

And trust me...it didn't look one iota as good as the one in this picture. Mine was like a greyish, greenish, brownish slimy color. Like the slime in ghostbusters... but dirty. It wasn't pretty people! I didn't even want to claim it when people were making faces and asking "Who made this!"

The dish that I remember the last winner making was a ceviche with avocado and she made small toasted tortilla shells to scoop the ceviche on top of. It was the best thing I have ever tasted...well with fish and avocado and tortilla shells anyway! Ceviche is a dish made with ingredients like fish or shrimp or crab mixed with tomatoes, jalapenos, lemon juice, cilantro, onions and sometimes avocado...of course.

You can eat it as shown or served over lettuce or in a corn tortilla but usually it's served with tortilla chips and you scoop it on top and munch down. I haven't had it in a long time, but I'm kinda thinking it might be time to try it...I found a recipe for making it with Tuna and I do love Tuna.

But never again with the Avocado Pie!

Did Iron Chef continue on? I don't know. Stacie moved away and I never went to another one again. But it was great while it lasted and if I could find another group of adventurous people like that I would be all for doing it again. It was so much fun!

Have any of you ever done something like this? Or maybe a Progressive dinner? Food, Friends and Family...they just go together don't they?