Appetizer's, Margarita's, and Tomatoes!

This past weekend, Jason and I hosted a party. It was our second time having company this year. (We lead very dull, friendless, lives.) The first party we had was in May, I think, and it was a Wine and Cheese party. It was a huge hit and everyone had fun. For this party, Jason requested an Appetizer and Margarita party. We had figured out Wednesday morning that Saturday evening would work best and I started sending out the invites. I think the guest list was originally about 15, but by Friday night, it had grown to 20+. One of our friends, Justin, kept asking me "How do you feel about that many people in your house at one time?" (If you've seen our house, you would understand. At the last party, the majority of the guests had to sit on the floor!) I just kept saying the more the merrier, as long as everyone brings an appetizer to share! I also knew that some people were probably not going to make it anyway, so I didn't worry to much.

Jason, Justin, Christian

We ended up with 12 people for the party and lots of food. Jason made his personal recipe of hot cheese dip and stuffed mushrooms. I made some jalapeno and cream cheese stuffed pastries, guacamole, salsa, and pita bread. Our guests brought: Indian Peanut Stew (which was great with the pita bread!), garlic and chive dip, chips, Pumpkin Spice Doughnut Holes, rice, stir-fried veggie stew, and cookies. We also had sliced watermelon and apples, a garden salad, and of course, margaritas. We had plain, hand-mixed margaritas, frozen margaritas, and mix-from-a-jug margaritas!

Shannon and Katana

After a lot of the eating and munching was done, we played the same game as we did in May. It's called "Battle of the Sexes." It is an interesting game where the guys and girls are on separate teams and the guys get asked girl-related questions, and the girls get asked guy-related questions. The girl ones are usually either about a chick-flick movie, makeup, or clothing. The guy ones are usually about sports, guy-movies (such as Star Wars) and cars. To be honest, I knew very few of the answers to either category; I guess I'm not girly enough, nor man enough! There were some questions that neither team had any clue as to what it was talking about. And there were other questions that just had underlying implications that made for very interesting discussions! It was quite a riotous evening.

 Nikki and Brittany

I determined after this party that I should start taking photos of the amazing food that gets home-made from everyone. I've never done that before.

Jake

After the last guests left at midnight, Jason and I were ready for bed. It was a lot of fun and we want to do it again, but sleep is good. Oh! And Gunther got to invite his bestest friend Salem to the party and they hung out in the backyard. The next day is when I discovered that they got into a bit of mischief digging, but they had a ton of fun and wore themselves completely out.

On Sunday, I realized that I had forgotten to serve the most slaved over dish that I had prepared specifically for the party!!!! It was a new recipe called Two-Tone Cheesecake. It took me about 5 hours total to make it and I was so excited to serve it at the party and I forgot all about it! So in the afternoon, Jason and I partook of the dessert to see if it was as good as it was supposed to be.

And it was. 

In some ways, I was glad that I had forgotten it, because I wanted to eat it all by myself. It is super delicious and looks fantastic, too! Jason and I are slowly enjoying this massive piece of work throughout this week. I did take a piece to Brittany, so I'm not being completely selfish!

Also this weekend, I got in a bunch of tomatoes. Bountiful Baskets had 25lbs. of Roma tomatoes for $14.50 available, so I decided to get 50lbs. to use and can up. I thought that they would need to ripen a little bit and planned to do them later in the week. When I picked them up, I found out that they needed done kind of right away. So Sunday afternoon, I worked on cutting up and cooking 2 large pots full of tomatoes for sauce, and then dicing up some for just regular diced tomatoes.

I only have one large pot, so the cooking had to be done in shifts. I borrowed a friends canning pots and thought I could have two canners going, one doing pints of diced tomatoes, and one doing quarts of sauce. Well, that didn't work out so well since I didn't think ahead about how to place the canners on the stove the best way and still be able to reach the control knobs. So I ended up having to do them one at a time. 

I got about 2/3 of the tomatoes canned on Sunday. I ended up with 8 quarts and 4 pints of sauce (although it looks more like juice for some reason, even after I tried to cook it down) and 6 pints of diced tomatoes. I haven't decided yet if the rest of the tomatoes will be sauce, diced, or both.

And that's how you have Appetizer's, Margarita's and Tomatoes!