Cheese Fondue, Potato Salad, Veggie Pizza, Chocolate Mint Squares, Chocolate Fondue, Coffee Cake, Lemon Drop Martini

Happy Birthday to Kori! For her birthday we had a little dinner party at my apartment. I started the morning grocery shopping and returned home. My mom had stopped by after church to drop off my camera that I had forgotten at her house. I thought she would just stay for a little while, but she ended up staying until dinner to help me prepare and cook. Thanks Mom! We quickly started on the Chocolate Mint Squares (Mom) as they needed to set for 4 hours. After the squares were in the freezer my mom took a seat at the table and began to chop…and chop..and chop! She sliced and diced like the expert that she is. I worked on the Coffee Cake (Amanda A.) which gave me a little trouble. I hadn’t evenly dispersed the 4 butter cubes in my streusel topping so there was dry cinnamon streusel on top of the baking cake. So much for a nice brown top! But I had the best idea yet, and I think Paula Deen from food network would agree. I just melted and dumped more butter on the thing. My mom put it well, “butter never hurts.” Jeff came home just in time to help me prepare a little bit. As I squeezed fresh lemon juice for martinis he tried to make lemon twists. Our lemon twist creation device is not top notch and it took Jeff so long to make them.
Once everyone arrived Jeff mixed up some Lemon Drop Martinis and I started on a Cheddar Cheese fondue upon Kori’s request. I can officially call myself a cheese making expert; because this one was delicious!
Everyone pretty much filled up on the cheese and they were slightly worried about how much more they had to eat. We then had potato Salad (Holly) which I accidently drowned in paprika and Vegetable Pizza (Mom). I had also utilized some fresh spices from my garden (chives for the cheese and parsley for the pizza). Recently, I bought some fresh spices, pots and soil and was so excited to have fresh spices all the time. As this dinner party was a week ago, the spices were thriving. At the current moment, it is safe to say that the garden has failed. The apartment faces south and has a covered porch so I couldn’t get enough sunlight. My next action really put the project in the dump; I rigged up bungee cords to suspend the pots slightly over the edge of my porch. All was going well until I woke up one windy morning and my pot was gone, 2 stories down, and my bungee cord was dangling from the porch. I had to retrieve the plants which had fallen into a thorny bush below; I thought the best time to do so was when I was wearing a skirt and heels. I broke a branch, cut up my legs and was covered in sap all in one fail swoop!
Sorry, huge digression….
We finished the dinner with chocolate fondue, chocolate mint squares (which taste like mint chocolate chip ice cream) and coffee cake. It wasn’t until after we had finished our martinis that I realized we had forgotten the lemon twists Jeff had spent so long making. Opps! I think the strength of the martinis assisted in this mistake. And of course, we played Wii. Amanda is a terrible rower (sorry!), Kori found her calling as a rower and the sword fighting was intense! Mike even held his own despite having a very bad reaction to the cat. I made everybody take leftovers this time so my next blog isn’t, “how I gained 100 pounds."