In An Attempt Too Wow....

Being 40 years old I decided it was time to follow in the tradition of thousands of women around the world and host my first home party, for Tupperware no less!

To be very honest, I don´t like home parties. I mean, I like the social aspect of them but I don´t like the pressure to buy. You´re always told you don´t have to buy, you can just come and have a nice time, but there you are with everyone in someone´s living room and everyone has pens and order forms and it just feels wrong to not order anything! So generally I try to avoid home parties but I have attended some and they seem otherwise harmless enough and there are always yummy cakes to eat! I do love cake!!! :-)))

So being the "Gourmet" I am...(NOT) I decided my Tupperware party would be a tad fancier with a little more food then just a cake! I was going to attempt too WOW them.. :-)

There were only 6 ladies who came to the party. I had only hung up notice about this party at work and totally forgot to ask anyone else- so for those of you who feel cheated out of this party there will be a new chance in November, just let me know if you´re interested! Yeah, I got suckered into a second party...but hey...by holding a second party within a year I qualified to be a VIP hostess and they get a lot of free cool stuff and that is what it´s all about isn´t it? The cool free stuff???!!! What can I say, I´m a sucker for free stuff...I´d probably have easily been one of those kids who get stolen by someone offering them free candy....if it´s free it has to be a great deal.....right???!!!!

Ok, back to the food. I did do a cake. The Classic Coca Cola cake which those who have been in my life long enough probably have tasted once or twice...a dreamy chocolate cake which is always a success.

Then I decided to try some tapas or finger foods for we simple people who like simple descriptions!!

First I made Asian Chicken Meatballs

These were yummy and when you eat them with your fingers you get the added bonus of licking the sauce off your fingers afterwards...slurp slurp!!! ;-)

Then I made Mini Quiches.

Wish I had a recipe to share with you but I don´t. I found a recipe for salmon mini quiches and pretty much read how high she had her oven and how long she baked her quiches and then pretty much improvised after that. That is the great thing about quiche, you can pretty much put whatever you want in them. So here is what I did. I bought butter dough pastry (you could also use a pie pastry dough would work also) in Norwegian that would be, Smørdeig.

I rolled out the butter dough pastry and cut out circles with a big glass I had and then laid the circles in a lightly greased muffin pan. Then I filled each one with bacon, mushrooms, and onions which I had fried up earlier and a teaspoon of roasted garlic cream cheese from Philadelphia´s new special cream cheese line. Then I mixed cream and eggs together and added some pepper and salt and then filled up the muffin cups until almost to the top, these puff up really big in the oven but then they sink once you take them out of the oven and they cool. I had my oven at 200C/400F and I baked these until golden brown- about 15 -20 minutes. YUM..and by the time I served them they weren´t piping hot either but they still tasted good, luke warm! :-)

Then I went out on an edge and made Deep Fried Ravioli.

Again, no recipe, although I am sure there are some out there and I probably did this wrong but it still tasted pretty good. My kids LOVED them so when I get their approval it will generally be something we would make again! So here is what I did here. I cheated...Gordon Ramsay and Eivind Hellstrøm would prefer you to make your ravioli from scratch but I went to the store and bought mine out of the refridgerator section. I got the ravioli with cheese fill. I heated up a pan of cooking oil and dumped them in until they got a nice golden color like you see above and then I took them out and drained them on paper towels and sprinkled garlic salt over them. Then you serve these preferably warm with a marinara sauce which is basically a tomato sauce and since I was already on a cheating streak I just bought some tomato sauce, warmed it up, and used that as our dip. I felt these ravioli tasted a lot like salty crackers with cheese fill and the dip was absolutely necessary for extra flavor!

For my next finger food I made a classic that Sarah´s boyfriend and family shared with us on our first visit to their house. We all went crazy for this and ate everything they served us so they had to go refill the plate and thank goodness they did because it was yum yum yum....They know next time to just make double when it comes to our family...hehehehe...we´re not shy when it comes to good food!

This is an easy peasy finger food which you can really play around with because you add and subtract ingredients to this depending on what you feel like. We stuck with what we had been served at Pål´s house the first time and that was this:

You´ll get a package of flour tortillas, spread snøfrisk (goat cream cheese) over the entire thing, then add some pieces of smoked salmon and some leek or spring onions and roll up and cut into bite size pieces. Super easy and super good! I have another friend who did another version of this with cream cheese, ham, basil leaves, and sun dried tomatoes and again- YUM YUM YUM!

Finally a faithful reader of my blog, who also has me as a friend on facebook, sent me some wonderful suggestions of various appetizers they enjoyed and I decided to try Bruschetta as I´ve always wanted to try it but never given it a shot. Primarily because I am the only one who really eats tomatoes in the family- in their natural form..so I just never have gotten around to making it. However, now I´ve made it and I LOVE it! So easy, so fresh, such a delightful taste in every bite! I loved tomatoes before but then I added finely chopped garlic and finely chopped red onion and some basil leaves (dried- fresh would probably be even better) and some salt and pepper and lovely extra virgin olive oil and let those flavors wrap themselves around each other in the fridge for several hours and now I am like a bruschetta addict....I had to have some for breakfast...and now it´s soon lunch...I´ll probably have more for lunch...it is just that good!

Oh I forgot an important part in the bruschetta and that is the bread. I bought some cheap french baguette bread here in Norway that you reheat in the oven, I think it was like 9 kroner or something at Joker..I sliced it ultra thin and brushed it with olive oil and sprinkled it with garlic salt and then stuck it in the oven until it was crispy...super easy. I am sure if I had bought a better quality french bread- or made some myself it would have just made it all the better, but sometimes we just want to get by cheap and easy...that was me last night!

I think the food was a success. I was serving a bunch of Norwegians, which, God bless them...they are quiet and shy when it came to a buffet type serving. Unlike my darling countrymen who would have piled their plates as high as possible, these ladies took a few pieces on their plate at a time and a max of two trips back to the buffet in the kitchen...but everyone said they enjoyed the food...so I was happy! :-) It´s important for a cook, even a hobby cook, to feel like she has made people happy with her food...it gives a pleasure I can´t describe unless you´ve experienced it yourself...even if I have to beg for feedback, I´m gonna find out if you liked my food so I can experience that happy feeling! And if you don´t like what I´ve made it´s ok too, I learn from my mistakes and I can´t learn if no one tells me what they don´t like!

I´m exhausted today and the weather is not encouraging anything but hibernation under a warm fuzzy blanket with a good book or magazine and something warm to drink...I should do more...I have a list...a never ending list...but I have a need to listen to my body and take it easy when it says I have had enough, so I can get up and get going tomorrow and not just be more exhausted.

I think I´m gonna snuggle with this guy today....

Look at him laying up there on that couch with the fuzzy warm blanket and that big ol´teddy bear face just calling out for me to snuggle snuggle snuggle with him....Oh I love my Bently Bear! :-) Alright, I love the whole gang...they are all a bunch of funny monkeys who fit perfectly into my circus life!

Have a wonderful day with your funny monkeys and thanks for stopping by!

Until next time my friends....