![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/IMG_2442.jpg\" "\\"IMG_2442\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nI love hosting dinner parties!! Michael isn’t as excited about them right now because our kitchen has been in a state of remodel for a few years now. He’d prefer we wait til the kitchen is 100% done but….sometimes you just have to live life as it is, right?<\/p>\n
Saturday morning I worked out hard<\/em>\u00a0at the gym and felt like I was amped up all day long. I cleaned the house like the Pope was coming over for dinner, went grocery shopping for last minute dinner supplies and then started the prep. Thankfully I had Twitter for some last minute questions!<\/p>\n Salami Roll<\/strong> –\u00a0I took slices of salami and other\u00a0Italian\u00a0meats and spread a thin layer of \u00a0cream cheese on it, rolled it up and then stuck a toothpick through it. The salami and capocolo worked great, the prosciutto was just too thin and kept ripping.<\/p>\n Some were topped with black olives, some without. I also chopped up some carrots and added some cheese munchies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For the main dish I made my favorite signature dish: West African Cashew Soup<\/a>. This is one of my favorite soups I’ve ever made. I love the variations you can have with it–the zucchini and yellow squash are not part of the original recipe but I loved the addition. You can tailor it to your comfort level for the spice, too.<\/p>\n I like extra spicy but not everyone can handle that. If you don’t like spicy at all, you can leave the red pepper flakes out and it’s still really good.<\/p>\n The soup goes best with a crunchy bread. This time I got a wheat baguette with some seeds and grains in it, but in the past an olive ciabatta has been great too.<\/p>\n Because of the cashew butter, the soup is really thick and creamy–decadent and delicious.<\/p>\n For dessert I made something simple and\u00a0delicious I will call Honey Pears. First I cored and quartered some fresh pears and sliced them lengthwise. I spread a little mild goat cheese on the pears. Then I drizzled them with honey and some with Agave.<\/p>\n I topped the pears with some chopped and toasted walnuts.<\/p>\n Ta-da! A healthy dessert alternative. I loved this dessert. It was so easy to make and it tasted really good. I wondered if the goat cheese would be strange with the honey but it was awesome<\/em>. I would totally make this dessert again!<\/p>\n QUESTION: Have you ever hosted a dinner party? What was on the menu?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the weekend I hosted an intimate dinner party. I had my cousin Anna over and Michael’s old roommate Shoe joined us too. I love hosting dinner parties!! Michael isn’t as excited about them right now because our kitchen has been in a state of remodel for a few years now. He’d prefer we wait […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16,55,1952,2124,1193,315,5060,2372,104,2565,107,1949,108,109,125,1785,3205,2559,169,171,193,194,212,214,2973,247,251,2932,303,304],"tags":[2954,5062,516,8770,3149,1674,551,8632,5063,5064,5065,8674,937,8724,5061,1918,8764],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/IMG_2452.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25188"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25188"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26267,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25188\/revisions\/26267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nI got as much prepped as I could before our guests arrived! Shoe brought two really nice bottles of wine to go with our dinner.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nI liked the Bogle a lot<\/em>. It was fairly mild and just lovely to drink. The Earthquake Syrah was a punch in the face. It was intense, strong, smelled like “burning” (as Michael put it) and tasted like Earth but it was also really good. Intense, but good.<\/p>\nAppetizers<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
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\nIt was simple and fast to make. And let’s be honest, everything tastes better with cream cheese. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\nMain Dish<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
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\nIt’s also a pretty decadent soup–for very little calories! You would think that with the cashew soup it would be really high in calories but it’s not. I calculated this soup recipe with the ingredients serving 6 people. So obviously that number is a little higher or lower depending on how you serve it up.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nDessert<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
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\nAnd what dinner party is complete without board games?!<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nI love game nights.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/h3>\n“Over a bottle of wine, many a friend is found.” –Yiddish Proverb<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n