Like many of you out there I love food. And I love cooking, especially for friends. Last year I had this wonderful dinner party with some of my best friends. I created an entire 5 course menu by myself. It was super duper delicious and I was super proud! I have to admit though; I can’t take all the credit. I got the best help of my friends and I can assure you that without them it would have been a total disaster.
Usually I think the best part of dinner events is the prep work. For this occasion it was extra challenging to come up with something that would please everyone. The reason? There were two vegetarians and one meat-lover/cheese-hater to please. And of course my best friend Cleo, but she eats everything so she wasn’t the problem ;). When I started searching for recipes, all of a sudden every single thing I was interested in making included CHEESE. How annoying! After a little while I figured out it was best to change my strategy by looking for dishes out of a different cuisine which was basically NOT Italian. That made things a lot less complicated.
I ended up doing all the groceries and with my two friends we cooked for about 3 hours. And boy oh boy was it worth the effort and wait! Our appetizer was a cucumber-humus bites we ate during our cooking adventure. For starters we had my favourite cauliflower soup with homemade croutons. Our main course was Moroccan veggie stew with mint couscous. Oh my, so good! It was salty, sweet and exotic flavoured with ginger, turmeric, cumin, cinnamon, raisons and a ton of veggies. To refresh our pallets I made an easy ‘cocktail’ with Prosecco, some lemon sorbet and a sprig of fresh mint leaves. To end this incredible meal, I baked some super easy mini chocolate cakes and served them with a mocha sauce. Now if that doesn’t sound good to you, I just think you’re nuts….
The last few days I’ve been trying to create a great dinner menu for the second time in a row. Coming Saturday I’ll be hosting another cosy dinner evening just like last year J Even though you’d think I would have some dinner menu experience by now, this time I had even more difficulty coming up with something spectacular. That’s because this year a fifth friend decided to join but he’s an all round meat-lover. I have nothing against meat lovers, I used to be a big fan myself, but I just have this feeling he will be extra difficult to please with a vegetarian meal. So after hours and hours of searching all the food blogs I could find for something meat-lover-approved-vegetarian goodness, I decided to go back to my roots and make something Surinam Surinam
This weekend was all about food too. My cousin came over and we both had super long and tiring days. We’ve created this 4-step tradition when we have our almost monthly sleepovers:
1. Do some groceries
2. Cook awesome dinners
3. Bake cookies
4. Watch a movie
This time we made home-made pizzas. I love making my own pizza because then I can decide what and how much I want to put on it. My pizza was loaded with veggies and a little bit cheese. Nom nom nom! After we munched down our pizza’s we baked some chocolate chip cookies. The movie was nice too, but we both we’re so tired we just went to bed and talked till we fell asleep.
The next day we went down to the market. Since I’m a vegetarian its really important for me eat enough protein, vitamins and minerals that can kind of replace meat. Eating fish makes this a lot easier to do. But besides that I make sure to eat plenty of nuts and seeds and berries too! These are packed with all the good stuff I might be missing. I always my nuts and dried fruits at the same market stand of some Turkish men that adore me. They really know me by now and it’s always nice to have a little chat and sometimes even some discount ;). I always buy mixed nuts, some dried cranberries and gojiberries and throw these on top of yogurt with fresh fruit in the morning. Best way to start my day!
After our little market stroll a dropped of my cousin at the train station where another friend was waiting for me to pick him up! (Yes I know, my social life is insane…). Together we made lasagne roll ups with a pretty salad and had cookies for dessert. It was a delicious dinner and after with had some drinks at a local bar. It was a nice evening filled with laughter and loads of catching up chatter. Definitely a friend I should hang out with more often!
All in all it was a great weekend. The only thing missing: my yoga practice! So now I’m off to bed so I can get up tomorrow and pamper myself with an extra long yoga session, followed by an extra long study session. A girl has got to do what a girl has got to do…
Stacey
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