Girl's Night In

I love to be a hostess.  There is nothing better than planning a party, then lovingly preparing an assortment of foods then welcoming friends into your home to share it with you.  I love that.  I did that this weekend.  It was Girl's Night In at my house.  

As I planned the evening, I wanted to have 'girly' food.  Or, to put it another way, as it was the eve of Super Bowl, 'anti-Super-bowl-party-food'.  The menu was vegetarian. Everything, except the crackers and chips, were homemade.

On one table there was vegetarian pizza, carrot ginger soup (brought by a lovely friend), a zesty cherry cheese ball, and felafels with yogurt sauce.   I had never made felafels before.  I am either very very brave or quite crazy, as felafels are rather delicate and tricky to make.  But, I had seen them made on tv, so I was a pro.  Right?  Ha ha.  The first batch into the pan disintegrated into the oil.  So a little adjusting and voila!  Batch two were perfect.  Thank you to my sous chef Lexi for helping with all the last minute food preparation.  It was so much fun to have her in the kitchen cooking with me.  

We have tomato, basil and fresh mozza skewers, a pesto and sun dried tomato dip, a yummy tex-mex layered dip made by beautiful daughter, Lexi, and chocolate truffles.   I had chosen a variety of wines from various regions to have some wine tasting.  However, only myself and one other friend were wine drinkers.  She has also brought a couple more wines to add to the assortment.  Lexi made the wonderful punch as well.  Not pictured were individual caramelized mango upside cakes.  

The food was definitely a hit.  Many of our guests, which included some of Samm's friends as well, got to try something they hadn't had before. 

To kick off the entertainment portion of the evening, Victoria donned her outfit that her grandma bought for her in Turkey, and belly danced.  

She was a hit!!   It was hard to follow that up, but Annyse and I gave it a try!

The living room is quite small for dancing with veils, swords and canes.  

But we did it anyway! We are crazy like that.

Annyse's zill playing was a hit!  I am not good with the zills.  

(sidenote:  Thank you Lexi for taking pictures with my camera.  

If you hadn't, I would have only pictures of food.)

Every party should have belly dancers!!  

This is my Oat Girl.  She belly danced with me at her mom's wedding.  She is taller than me now.  I don't want to talk about it.

It's hard to tell from this photo, but Samm and her friends were having fun.  I promise they were.

Oat girl's momma.  Also known as Muck.  Also known as Kristi.  

Victoria couldn't contain herself when we danced with our veils.  She found a blanket and used that to do try and do all the things we were doing.  She was pretty good.

So we gave her an actual veil to play with.  

Did I mention the homemade truffles?  

Over all, Girl's Night was a success.  

I am already hatching a plan in my head for the next one.