Dinner party for 8 - Continued

After a whole day of cooking, some presents and wonderful company, the dinner party is over. Had excellent Chicken Bryan with pasta salad with walnuts and Gorgonzola cheese, stuffed tomatoes as an appetizer and sugar cream pie for dessert. Everyone loved it!

Now, getting ready for the next big event with friends

Dinner party for 8

I woke up bright and early (9am) to get all my ingredients together. I still had to go get the chicken and the tomatoes, the salad greens and a little bit more cheese. So after my shower, I head on over to Publix, quickly run the aisles that I need, pay and i'm out. Get home and start getting ready. I want to have most of it done before 6:00pm, that way is not all coming to me at once.

I get started on the dessert and the pasta, the dessert needs to be baked so it only makes sense to make first, plus, you want to give it time to cool off. No one likes warm dessert, or do they? Pasta is ready and the dessert is ready to be put in the oven. Being the multi-tasking queen that I am, i start to drain the pasta, and pour the dessert into the pie shell. No, not at once, I needed two hands for the pasta and two for the dessert, the pasta came first.

Put the pie in the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Easy. Mix the pasta with the greens and chop walnuts and get the Gorgonzola cheese ready. This is an easy salad. after all, I only need to mix pasta and green, the rest are optional toppings for my guests. Mix the salad dressing and we're good to go. Oil and vinegar, also simple.

Get started on the aioli, mix all the ingredients together until smooth and thick. Gut the tomatoes, chop the olives and the capers and mix with the aioli. Once the tomaotes are hollow, fill with the aioli, caper and olive mix.

The joys of preparing ahead...it is only 1:18pm and I am way ahead of the game. Only need to cook the chicken and hello Dinner Party for 8

Rice Puddin

Let me just start by saying, I have never, NEVER before in my life tried home made rice pudding. I have always loved it, but never ate it. I usually get it at the store.

Not too long ago, I had a hankering for rice pudding. while I debated on whether or not to stop at the store and get some, I decided to Google some recipes and try my culinary luck at it.

Start with plain rice and milk, add some sugar and let it sit while you stir, stir, stir. Long process yes, but well worth it. Only, at the end, I had to add some more rice, the consistency was just too watery, I like my pudding nice and creamy. Note to self: DON'T! this doesn't give the rice that was added last enough time to soften.

Add some cinnamon on top and enjoy!

Shrimp Salad for my sweetie

After a long day working on the boat, I was thoughtful enough to make him dinner. Something simple, quick and delicious.

I called Toomey for the recipe, the one he had given me months ago but I was lazy to go look for it.

So I hit the kitchen and start thawing the shrimp, all whilst watching something stupid on TV...the joys of multi-tasking.

I get the dressing together, fresh grown dill and chives some mayo and lemon juice....

Cooked the shrimp to perfection and proceeded to mix all ingredients together.

Once done, I head over to the marina...wait, I needed crackers. Stop at Publix and make it to the marina with a delicious home made shrimp salad with saltines to wind down the day.

The only thing missing, a bottle of wine.

Beet Salad

This blog comes about as my good friend Jason's brilliant idea. I had shared with him my love for food and how I would love to be a food critic. As a result of that, both this blog and a game between us friends came about. The game consists of making one recipe per week (we both work and I go to school so anything more than that was almost impossible) and we would share it with each other.

This week's recipe: Beet and pear salad with a Red wine dressing.

I found it while flipping through one the magazines in the waiting room of my Dr.'s office. You know how you find those; you pick up a random magazine to kill time and BAM, you see it. You scan the recipe to see how difficult it looks and more importantly, if it has ingredients that you will actually eat. Then, without making a scene, you rip the page off the magazine and covertly stash it in your purse.

So after having proposed the game to Jason, I offered to start since I already had a recipe in mind.

If the smell is evidence enough to know how something tastes, then this salad is absolutely delicious. While I was cooking it, I could smell the sweetness of the beets as they slowly roasted in the oven and I kept thinking to myself, I can't wait until this is done just so I can taste it.

The true test lies on whether or not other people like it. I made some for my mom, I had to ask her what was the best way to cook the beets since I am an amateur chef at best, and also made some for my friend Jason, after all, he is the person with whom I am playing this game. Here's hoping this is a good dish...