Visiting Friends and Cappuchino Cups

Some of you may remember my bridesmaid, Christina.  She and her husband moved to the frozen north for law school reasons over the summer, but they came down to visit on his spring break!  It's the first time we've seen them since the wedding! We celebrated by going on a hike and then having people over for shish kabobs and frozen cappuchino cups (and a movie with lots and lots of yummy home popped popcorn).

N&N helping make the apple strudel we saved for Sunday breakfast

A note here about the cappuccino cups. I found the recipe on the Pioneer Woman's blog (found here) but needed to modify it because I had a friend coming who was has a gluten allergy. Oreos are definitely not gluten free. I happened to have a gluten free brownie mix, so Christina and I made the baked the gluten free brownies in a cupcake tin, then followed the rest of the recipe for the frozen cups.

You might think it was just scooping in ice cream, but there is a crucial step of adding nutmeg and cinnamon. I mostly did it out of curiosity, because the Pioneer Woman said to.

Wow. It was good.  We also made mint and chocolate/vanilla versions.  I added the spices to the chocolate/ vanilla flavor too--I highly recommend this experiment.

We topped them with chopped semi-sweet chocolate chips.  Mostly for effect.  It was a good effect. We got lots of compliments on the dessert even though we had a slight cupcake liner malfunction (gluten free brownies are much, much more dense than cupcakes.  Consequently baking them in paper and then stuffing them in the freezer is kinda like marriage-what God has joined together let no man put asunder. I think people ate a lot of paper, but they didn't complain.)

All the menfolk arrived early for dinner, whirled through various preparations (cutting meat, making salad, rinsing mushrooms) before going to play the Lord of the Rings Miniatures game while Christina and I chopped the remaining items, shished the kabobs, and grilled them on the handy-dandy George Foreman.  There were, though, so many men bustling around my kitchen that I had to take pictures of them.  Usually the Y chromosome is not so well represented--no condemnation, my friends and I find group cooking fun--and they all did a wonderful job.
It was a splendid afternoon (and evening). I think my bridesmaid should visit often. -The Lady

the First Cheesecake

Thursday evening last week Nick suggested we invite a few couples over for a potluck dinner over the weekend.  Us girls consulted and put our own variation on it, that we would bring ingredients and make dinner together.  We had a wonderful time, and I think that it was the best chicken parm I have ever had--with bread we garlic'd ourselves (running out of time and energy for making the bread ourselves too), salad, pasta, homemade spaghetti sauce and then homemade cheesecake for dessert...it doesn't get much better than that.  I think our pasta was actually better than the stuff we had in Italy.  And it never hurts to have good company and help while you cook.  I've decided that "bring your own ingredients" is the most fun way to do a potluck. At least with this group. Next up: wonton making day. Mom.....can I have that recipe?

pouring the layers of cheesy goodness

Among my newlywed skills is making spaghetti sauce from scratch-tho, my sister-in-law made this batch

freshly out of the oven

Nick taught the guys a game called Munchkin. It's kinda like someone was playing Calvin Ball then wrote down the rules

The finished work