Good Food, Good Friends

The other day we threw a very successful summer "unbirthday" party. It has been a dream of mine to have a summer birthday since I was born in the dead of winter and all my parties have consisted of sledding and skating, or when it was very, very cold, watching movies cuddle up under blankets. So, to make all things fair, my friend Shauneen and I decided to throw ourselves a half birthday party. But soon, everyone wanted to celebrate their half birthdays (turns out, most of my family was born in the winter... tricky). That turned the party into an "unbirthday" party, so we could celebrate everyone's unbirthday. The guest list was small, my parents, sisters, my twin brother, and a handful of our closest friends. We all contributed to the planning and cooking, and in the end it was the most satisfying party I've ever thrown.
The menu was the hit of the party. Because it was summer, we focused on fresh, light dishes, preferably with ingredients that were (at least in appearance) straight from the garden. And because I was one of the hosts, most of the dishes were gluten free!
We started off with a "cocktail hour" with wine spritzers and finger foods.
Kevin made stuffed mushrooms, the recipe found: http://recipes.kaboose.com/feta-spinach-stuffed-mushrooms.html

Christine made spinach and artichoke dip, the recipe found: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Hot-Artichoke-and-Spinach-Dip-II/

We all helped to make...

Tuna on bagel chips; I couldn't eat the bagel chips of course, but didn't mind because there was so much food to be had!
Deviled eggs, the eggs were fresh from the farm down the road! So fun!

And brochette; we made two types of brochette, one (small) platter for me, and a larger one for all of the other guests. I used Kinnik Kinnik baguettes.

The wine spritzer was made with a rose wine and black raspberry spritzer. It was rather delicious.

After the cocktail hour we played croquet. I haven't played croquet in a long time, but we felt it was the right thing to do for a summer party. Turns out, in my family at least, croquet is a pretty intense sport. Thankfully we had a second course to take our minds arguing about house rules and the fact that I won, apparently we "cheated." I do not agree.

The second course was delicious. We had some deviled eggs left over, so we put them out on the table.
Kristina made a very large salad with greens, cucumbers, craisens, and candied pecans.
Jessica made a caprese salad: tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, and balsamic vinegar.
And everyone helped to make beautiful fruit kabobs: sweet apple sausage, strawberries, and pineapple cut into cubes and layered on the kabob sticks. Lightly grilled. They were delicious.

For desert we had berries and cream, and of course cupcakes! Sarah made a batch of regular yellow cupcakes, and Jess and Kristina helped me with chocolate avocado cupcakes, which sound kind of gross, and while we were making them looked kind of gross, but tasted delicious!
I found the recipe on glutenfreesoyfreevegan.blogspot.com while I was still not eating meat (oh by the way, I'm back to eating meat...). The girl who writes the blog was hesitant to make the cupcakes at first but ended up loving them, so I took her word for it and went at it. We even accidentally made a double batch, and good thing we did, because they were snatched up quick!
Here's the recipe, I strongly recommend them!
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose gf flour (I used Pamela's pancake mix, of course)
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 avocado, pitted and peeled
1 cup pure maple syrup
3/4 cup rice/almond milk
1/3 cup coconut oil
2 tsp gf vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 F. Oil muffin tins (aka cupcake makers) with coconut oil. Whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in bowl. Purée avocado in a food processor until smooth. Add maple syrup, rice milk, oil, and vanilla, and blend until creamy. Whisk avocado mixture into flour mixture.

Spoon batter into prepared tins. Bake 25 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center comes out with some crumbs attached. Cool.

Everything turned out wonderfully. And I felt so proud of everything we had accomplished. Sitting at dinner enjoying the conversations and the delicious array of food, I was completely content with life, if only for that moment. It's funny what good food can do.