The Write Ingredients

(meet Tom, he spent the weekend on the refrigerator)

Girls Weekend Means Lots of Cheese and other Goodies, Day 1

The annual girls weekend was this past weekend, and among other things we tend to eat a lot. In fact, from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning, there's always some snacking going on. Everyone brings some snacks and cheese and wine and other munchies (M&Ms, Hot Tamales, and Cheetos made the list this year), but the highlights are the dinners. There are usually eight of us, so we divide into two teams and create a meal for eight thats vegetarian friendly and can be made without garlic.

My team, The Hot Tamales, made dinner Friday night. We started with a bowl of guacamole, which is also good, no matter where we are. I started with four avocados (which I was nervous about, because they sat in my car for four hours in -5 degree weather), but they were fine. I added some chopped red onion, tomato, cilantro, lime juice and about half of a jalapeno. With a touch of salt and pepper, we were good to go.

For dinner, my lovely teammates put together amazing enchiladas without a recipe. Guess we all figured we'd bring a copy, nope, but they figured it out anyway. We had roasted vegetables and chicken. Our team also put together a lovely salad with radishes (Yummo) and a lemon dressing.

Somehow, we found room for dessert and celebrated a birthday.

Jen's sister bakes cakes. And she bakes really good, really pretty cakes (see above). We celebrated T's birthday, and instead of struggling over a cake for two days, I asked Jen's little sister to help me out. We requested Chocolate Raspberry, and this is the part I love. The Raspberry is invisible. Its just the essence of the fruit, embedded in the most amazing chocolate glaze.

Can you see the four layers? And the adorable little white dots on the top? So cute. And so good. I'm trying to stay away from the leftovers....

As you can see, there were no recipes. Well, just the recipe for the enchilada sauce. The rest was an impromptu meal. And the cake, well the cake is a secret. Don't think our favorite baker will share her secrets. Then, well, they wouldn't be secrets!

More about the next day tomorrow, with recipes!