Catered Dinner Party

I'm lucky enough to live down the street from a very talented chef. We've become friends with him and his family, and Meezy and I have dined numerous times at the restaurant where he serves as the Executive Chef.  Another neighbor/friend mentioned that she had him cater a private party at her house and that gave Meezy and I an idea. Our friend/former exchange student/honorary family member (Kim) from Germany came back to visit us for 3 weeks recently, and we wanted to have a special dinner for her and her boyfriend. We thought about making reservations at a restaurant and inviting a few more friends, but the thought of having a dinner party at our own house sounded really fun.  It's comfortable and laid back and we could have control over the food and drinks being served.

First order of business was deciding on the menu. We knew we wanted five courses and wanted it to be a good variety of foods. I'm a vegetarian and our guest of honor doesn't like fish, so the chef was nice enough to do custom items to accommodate the two of us, while still providing an amazing course for everyone else.

With this many plates and silverware needed, we decided the best option was to use a rental company to provide them. We also hired a waiter to help with the serving and act as a bartender. Next order of business was the guest list. We knew we wanted to invite friends that Kim had grown particularly fond of throughout her previous stays with us. The hard part was trying to keep it to a reasonable number! We had to make sure we could afford that many guests and also would have enough room for them. I wish we could've invited a few more people, but this was the best we could do. The final guest list included 12 diners. My dining table is fantastic and can handle that many people with the leaves extended, but I don't have 12 matching chairs! It was a little hodge-podge, but at least we all had room.

I failed massively by not taking pictures of the chef working his magic or of each course as they were being presented. I snapped one quick pic of the first course as it was being constructed, though.

I also managed to get a pic of the dessert before I devoured every last morsel.

The dinner was truly phenomenal and the fellowship was on par too. It was great to sit back and catch up with friends in the comfort of our own home, while not having to deal with any of the usual hosting responsibilities. If we could afford it, I would do this more often!

Waffle Cookies

My Oma routinely made waffle cookies for family gatherings, and I thought I'd share the recipe with you, since they were always a big hit.  Here are the ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 4 cups of flour
• 2 cups of sugar
• 1.5 tsp of vanilla extract
• 3/4 pound of unsalted butter, softened (NOT melted); don't get a light version
• waffle maker

Sounds healthy, right?  Haha, it's not supposed to be.  It's just supposed to taste delicious!  I don't know how common it is for people to have waffle makers, but they're pretty inexpensive and you can get one at lots of places, including Target.

Steps:

Combine all ingredients into a large bowl.  Mix until well blended.  Refrigerate for 2-3 hours.  After it's chilled, roll up the mixture into small balls.  Place a ball on each quadrant of the waffle maker and depress.  The cookies are done when they are mostly medium brown in color, with light edges.  Remove them from the waffle maker and let them cool.  Continue the process until you've used up all of the mixture.  Here is what the finished product will look like:

     
Enjoy!

Sunday Baking Funday

If you hadn't noticed, I haven't given birth yet, so I decided to spend all day Sunday baking up some fun stuff to pass the time and provide us some sustenance for a couple days.

1. Red Velvet Cream Cheese Ball
Meezy loves red velvet anything, so he jumped at the chance to try this recipe.  It tastes pretty good, and the prep is easy.  The hard part is just the waiting while it chills in the refrigerator!  The chocolate chips overpowered the red velvet taste just a little bit on the initial bites, but once you got past the top layer, it was red velvety awesomeness.  We used Nilla wafers as our dipper of choice, and they were perfect for the job.  (Forgive my crappy pictures - I didn't feel like getting the good camera out of the hospital bag)  

 

2. Pepperoni Rolls
I saw a picture of these and definitely wanted to try them.  We couldn't find the frozen dough necessary at Walmart, and we luckily got the last package that Kroger had.  They had to sit out to defrost and rise for about 6 hours before they were ready for use, so you have to make sure to start that step early in the day.  We rolled the loaves out as instructed, but I think we should've rolled them even thinner because after cooking, the bread in the very middle wasn't as cooked as the dough on the outside.  We ended up cutting each pepperoni roll into slices and then putting them back in the oven for more cooking.  That worked!  I recommend a dipping sauce to go along with them, like marina or garlic butter.  Here are pictures of the process:

   
3. Garlic Parmesan Knots
I know I've mentioned this recipe before, but I just can't resist it.  It's super easy, and it's great with a lot of different meals.

And, the piece de resistance:

4. Pioneer Woman Cinnamon Rolls
These take quite a while to make, and require a lot of ingredients, but sweet mother - they are worth it!  I got the idea from my friend, Kari, who brought a batch over to us a couple months ago.  They are addictive, and probably the best kind of cinnamon rolls you'll ever taste!  This particular recipe makes a ton of rolls, so the idea is that you share them with friends and family.  You can freeze them and then once delivered, the recipient just bakes them for 20-30 minutes in the oven before eating.  They taste just as good as when originally made!  Here are pictures of the process:  (doesn't the last one make your mouth water?!?)

Tuesday Dinner

I know yesterday was Valentine's Day, but really it was just another Tuesday in my household!  Meezy and I aren't big on celebrating this "holiday" because it doesn't mean anything special to our relationship or to our personal lives.  I think we do a pretty good job of showing how much we love each other on a daily basis, so there's no special incentive to do it up big on this one day.  So, with that said, for Tuesday dinner I made us some yummy healthy-ish taco salads, followed by some very not healthy chocolate chip lava cookies.  I got the cookie recipe from here.

Observations/Results:

I opted to use store-bought chocolate chip cookie dough instead of making it from scratch, and I really underestimated how much I should get.  I mean, the amount was fine for 2 people, but if you're planning on making it for a group or having leftovers, get a large roll/tub of cookie dough.  I started putting out the first layer of dough into the muffin pan, and I only made it to about 6 before realizing I had already used half the roll.  I melted the chocolate chips (and also melted some white chocolate chips to see how that would taste) and poured a layer of the chocolate over my cookies in the pan.  Then I went through to put the second layer of cookie dough on.  I think you need to put more cookie dough on the top than you did on the bottom, because mine came out sunken in, more so than the pictures on the recipe.  If you use white chocolate too, like I did, you'll notice that it thickens up a lot quicker than the milk chocolate, so you've got to make sure not to microwave it for too long, and then you'll need to use it quickly in the preparation.  The white chocolate is going to come out a little harder and less lava-like after the baking, but it's still going to taste pretty darn good.  I put vanilla bean ice cream on top of mine, and Meezy ate his plain.  We both agreed they were quite delicious!