I realized I never shared the party post! And I have a lot of recipe catching up to do! I’ll start with the Epiphany party, because that’s much more fun. 🙂
I made way too much food as usual, and people kept getting th cold or flu that was running around, so it was a smaller party this year. The Husband’s Grandma and some of the other family came though, so that was fun. Fancy got to see her favorite uncle who buys her fun toys. 🙂
Fancy did very well at the Epiphany party. We kept her on leash and in her party harness, so she seemed to be a bit calmer. We had several friends who were comfortable holding the leash for us too, so we could actually talk to people. She had one incident of guarding/biting a box, but she did give it up when the Husband got out a beef chew for her. She was very sleepy that night and the next day.
New recipes included two gluten free/dairy free cookies, one of which was Keto friendly. We also had pigs in blankets with homemade crescent dough, because I couldn’t help myself.
I mean, I could have used the crescent roll dough in a tube, but that doesn’t taste nearly as good.
The smaller ones are gluten free almond flour chocolate chip cookies from off of the Trader Joe’s almond flour bag. The butter was switched out for margarine.
The other ones are Keto friendly snickerdoodles from I Breathe, I’m Hungry. https://www.ibreatheimhungry.com/low-carb-snickerdoodles-keto-gluten-free/
They were both pretty good. They ended up being soft, due to the almond flour. I’m not the biggest fan of artificial sugar, so I borrowed some from my friend Kayla.
She was lovely enough to come help the Husband and I food prep for the party and it worked out well to have help. Something hilarious happened though that kind of made the kitchen look like the Mayhem commercials happened…
This would be what happens when you hit the mixer switch to the highest setting by accident and have just put about a pound of powdered sugar in the mixer… After the initial shock, Kayla laughed too and I’m pretty sure she was the one to remind me to take a picture for the blog. 🙂 I had removed a few things from the counter before taking the picture, I think, the spatula and a measuring cup. It was a mess. We got it all sorted though.
I made peppermint bark from the December Food Network Peppermint Insert, but completely forgot to serve it! We had plenty of other sweets.
I had frozen the other honey sugar cookie dough, so those were made into sweater bears. The Husband likes bears in sweaters, ever since I bought a tin with a bear in a sweater holding a tree a few years ago.
We also had regular chocolate chip cookies, Berliner Kranzer, peanut butter balls, and the peppermint sugar cookies.
Other savory options were crab dip, a cheese and sausage tray, chicken salad, and the traditional rulle.
Also, a veggie tray and pickle tray. The Husband brought home some fancy popcorn and sugar cookies, so we had those too. It was lovely. We have been happily munching on the leftovers.
So that’s the party part of the post. On to the regular recipes!
I think I mentioned we got an Instant Pot and maybe the fact that I was a little terrified of using it…
It wasn’t as scary after I let the steam out the first time. I made a tomato, hamburger, and pasta soup.
https://www.skinnytaste.com/beef-tomato-and-acini-di-pepe-soup/
It needed more seasoning and I already added more than what the recipe called for. It was good enough to add to the recipe bank though.
I also tried two recipes from the Gordon Ramsey’s In The Heat Of The Kitchen cookbook. Homemade pasta and Tagliatelle with Mushrooms, with the homemade pasta. Technically this is fettuccini, but it worked.
We had the mushroom dish with steaks on New Year’s Day.
The pasta was delicious. I thought it was one of the better batches that I’ve made. It was silky and smooth. The dough was drier than previous dough and I think it made it less prone to sticking together.
Fancy was very determined to share our dinner.
I have made two recipes from the 2018 January/February Food Network Magazine already.
It has 12 muffin recipes! I used the Lemon Zucchini muffin one, but switched out the lemon to orange. I had the latter, but not the former.
Mmmm… they were delicious! I will happily make them again.
We had the Chili Shrimp from the stir-fry insert tonight and it was also good.
The last couple weeks have been a blur, so I’m sure there are ones I’m missing. I’ll post them when I remember them.
Have a wonderful weekend! My back is acting up again, so I may not be able to do much, but can maybe get some meal planning done. There are more Instant Pot recipes to be explored!
