Saturday, December 13, 2008

Finally

The party was last night, and as promised, I took lots of pictures while I was laying out the trays of cookies earlier in the day:

cookie party 2008

The party was better attended than last year, when it snowed on and off all day and some people just did not have the energy to shovel the driveway for the third time to get the car out to come to the party. I had more fun than last year (last year I felt like I worked too hard, and there was food leftover), although I didn't talk to my guests enough. I was super-organized - and I put a drinks table in the living room - so I think I was less stressed because there were fewer people cramming into the kitchen for wine glasses and cork screws.

The hit party food I think was the Cafe Flora-style quesadillas - cubed roasted squash, mixed with a parsley & pumpkin seed pesto, sandwiched in tortillas and toasted in a dry skillet.

The meatballs were good too, and people pretty much completely devoured 3 kinds of hot dip - spinach, artichoke and Buffalo chicken.

I also made a home-made onion dip, from 101 Cookbooks, although instead of using onion powder in the dip in addition to caramelized onions, like Heidi did, I melted a veggie bullion cube into the onions while they were cooking - I checked out the onion powders at my co-op, and I did not like the smell of them.

There were also some old standbys in savories, spanakopita (actually made with kale, because I got another giant kale in my CSA box) spicey peanut dip, wienies in poppin' dough (except I always use poppin' biscuit dugh, not the cresecnt rolls, which have a nasty buttery-flavor taste), all kinds of cheeses and crackers, like goat cheese marinated in herbed oil, all the herbs grown by Mark on the back deck last summer.

The day was not without its tribulations of course - the garage door got stuck, and today it cost $238 to repair - even the garage door repair guy suggested that we bust open the people door at the side of the garage - we could disable the opener and just open the door by hand, and never spend $238 again. And when I was getting ready to take all the pictures, the battery in my Canon was dead - the gluten free sweetmeats were shot with teeny tiny camera on the tripod, while the Canon's battery charged.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like quite the spread! We're having a party food recipe contest and would love to have you enter one of your favorite recipes. I've linked to the contest through my name - deadline to enter is tomorrow at 4 PM!

Vesna VK said...

What a wonderful event! Ulysses and I had a swell time. It was fun to meet in person a hitherto-Facebook-only friend. And sure enough, I ran into plenty of people I already knew! Also had the pleasure of meeting many of your friends, delightful people, everyone fun and easy to talk to.

We sampled your delicacies with deliberation and thoughtfulness, so as not to miss a moment of enjoyment of each morsel. I hope you're planning on posting more cookies and their names. Mmm-mmm.

Vesna VK said...

Oops, I just realized that the pictures are links to galleries. Yay!