the bells came over

and we had a totally fun belated birthday dinner for M:










somehow, we inhaled the food before I could get a few pictures, but our menu included chicken piccata (made by M himself), bird's nest pasta w/ homemade tomato sauce, steamed vegetables, and this awesome spinach salad that I can't wait to make again. I cut back on the bacon/bacon grease, used balsamic vinegar instead of cider, and since not everyone loves goat cheese as much as I do I served it crumbled on the side for individual sprinkling, but it was still a totally yummy salad that everyone seemed to really like.

the homemade tomato sauce wasn't on purpose. I had thrown butter and chopped up mushrooms in a pan with some chopped garlic, and discovered that the cupboard was bare of Diablo (devil) Sauce, our current favorite cheap & spicy pasta sauce by Francesco Rinaldi. I'd already been to the store and didn't feel like going again, so I started going through the pantry. into the blender went the following:

1 large can of peeled, crushed tomatoes
dried herbs: basil, thyme, oregano, pizza seasoning
celery salt
fresh ground pepper
red pepper flakes
a splash of red wine vinegar
a baby splash of chili oil
a couple of glugs of extra virgin olive oil

I blended the above together, then added a bunch of fresh flat-leaf parsley and let that blend a bit. I poured the sauce from the blender into the saucepan with the mushrooms and garlic, and let it simmer for awhile. It was a smoother sauce than we're used to, but I've got to say we really liked it a lot and I hope to keep making it and trying new things.

for dessert, we had wild blueberry pie with almond crumble topping, which was really great and easy (especially since I cheated and used a store-bought crust. sue me!). a word to the wise - um, you really do need to let it cool, like the recipe says. especially before trying to put candles in it. I'll spare you the story of me throwing away the first batch of candles and furtively fishing wax out of my lovely pie. the topping on this dish comes out really crunchy with just the right amount of sweet, and rather than grab our usual Kroger brand ice cream I splurged on Blue Bell. this was the bomb with a nice cup of decaf:














it was a really wonderful night. we loved having you guys over! extra points and snaps for C, my brother-in-law's girlfriend, for loaning me the third Twilight book! yeah, I've already started it...


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taken when we went to see our 3-D slasher movie the other day:





scary, right?


-m.y.