Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Guests for dinner
the neighbors came for dinner on sunday evening. for some unknown reason i went a little nuts and used 3 new recipes and changed another i hadn't made for several years. i think my kitchen was visited by a crazy person! the appetizer recipes were pretty great.....a parsley hummus that was green with a bit of a bite from tahini, cumin and cayenne that i served with sugar snap peas and caulifloweretes, and blue cheese and caramelized onion squares that were impressive!
a simple romaine and grape tomato salad, my old standby pork tenderloin with cranberry/rosemary sauce, and a new one....roasted sweet potatoes and yams with fingerling potatoes. you could choose the herb seasoning to go with the minced garlic, and i used thyme and sage.....they were good, but a bit mushy as they cooked quicker than expected. next time i will use a slower oven and finish with increased heat to get a little crusty edge, or maybe just cut the taters in bigger pieces than recommended. we had the old stand by trader joe sourdough rolls instead of the popovers i was originally planning. (i do have SOME sense i guess!) for dessert, gary contributed some date bars that were fabulous, and we had some of my pear ginger bread and food for the gods, my grandmother's recipe...little samples of each. when i made it the day before both don and i thought the latter too sweet, but it didn't seem so when served. i substituted dried apricots for the dates and it was a good thing, although i love it with dates too.
we served the appetizers in the kitchen which was fun.....brian had made some key suggestions when the remake was in progress but hadn't seen it with completed back splash tile and wood floor. all in all a really great evening. have to do it again, but next time using familiar recipes for heaven sakes!!
we all had a great time visiting and talking about travel....they've been to paris 3 times and we've been to london twice and so we both learned a lot. we probably need to visit paris with phrase book in hand of course!
a simple romaine and grape tomato salad, my old standby pork tenderloin with cranberry/rosemary sauce, and a new one....roasted sweet potatoes and yams with fingerling potatoes. you could choose the herb seasoning to go with the minced garlic, and i used thyme and sage.....they were good, but a bit mushy as they cooked quicker than expected. next time i will use a slower oven and finish with increased heat to get a little crusty edge, or maybe just cut the taters in bigger pieces than recommended. we had the old stand by trader joe sourdough rolls instead of the popovers i was originally planning. (i do have SOME sense i guess!) for dessert, gary contributed some date bars that were fabulous, and we had some of my pear ginger bread and food for the gods, my grandmother's recipe...little samples of each. when i made it the day before both don and i thought the latter too sweet, but it didn't seem so when served. i substituted dried apricots for the dates and it was a good thing, although i love it with dates too.
we served the appetizers in the kitchen which was fun.....brian had made some key suggestions when the remake was in progress but hadn't seen it with completed back splash tile and wood floor. all in all a really great evening. have to do it again, but next time using familiar recipes for heaven sakes!!
we all had a great time visiting and talking about travel....they've been to paris 3 times and we've been to london twice and so we both learned a lot. we probably need to visit paris with phrase book in hand of course!
Labels: food, friends, good conversation, new recipes
# posted by jini @ 11:26 AM 
