use real butter

deadly mashers – add cream

I forgot to photograph the end result of the deadly mashers. But they were a huge hit. Take the ingredients of my potatoes au gratin (use gruyère) and make mashers with it… cream, butter, shredded gruyere, grated parmesan, yukons, nutmeg, pepper, salt. Bake with goodies on top and serve hot. I think it’s a million calories per serving.

We had our good neighbors over for dinner tonight – finally! These two are great fun. They ate a lot of the food and wine, which makes me happy. I told Jeremy the worst feeling for a hostess is when her guests don’t eat because she miscalculated the menu. I really plan a menu according to who is coming and how all of the dishes, the wine, and the dessert combine to make a complete fête. Which is why if you are picky, a vegetarian, are a complete food unsophisticate, or have various food restrictions – I have to like you an awful lot to invite you to dinner at my house. Forget about vegans, they will be really unhappy in my kitchen.

ceviche salad ingredients (yes, those are heirloom tomatoe$)

adding the dressing

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Ooh! Kell turned the artichoke dip recipe (hello everyone, I have to tell you that it isn’t MY recipe… I got it from the Etiquette Grrls web site a long time back) into PASTA. What a brilliant girl! She has inspired me to consider making something akin to a savory baklava, but more like spanikopita… I figure we’ll layer the phyllo dough the way you do in baklava (lots of layers) rather than the way you do in spanikopita (one giant filling in the middle). The filling will be coarsely ground artichokes, pine nuts, parmesan cheese, garlic paste and…??? It may very well suck, but I doubt it.

This evening we reviewed Japango, a sushi bar in Boulder. Sushi is great in summer (it’s great anytime, really). There are a lot of sushi bars for the size of Boulder, which says something about the population here – they love sushi. The trick is filtering out which ones are lousy and which ones are great.

japango

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