Dinner Playdate

Last night we had Avery and her parents over for dinner. We met her parents-to-be through our adoption agency last November at a Waiting Families Gathering. Little did we know at the time that we would all have babies in our lives in a matter of weeks! Avery is a month older than Ian and as cute as they come! Is there anything better than baby giggles?

Avery's mommy is an avid blogger (yeah) and introduced me to the most wonderful thing...Google Reader. Ahhhhhh ahhhh ahhh ahhh, do you hear the angels singing too? Google Reader allows you to subscribe to blogs and websites and such and notifies you when there is new content. By some standards, the 30 or so blogs that I read regularly do not make a long list. But checking them everyday to see if anyone has posted an update was becoming tedious. Especially when many bloggers only update monthly. (You fortunate readers, on the other hand, are blessed with two posts in one day thank you very much!) But thanks to Google Reader, I just open one folder and bam, there are my notifications. Quite the time saver! So of course, I had to pass along this tip to you. What can I say? I'm a giver.

Okay, back to the dinner. Since you seem absolutely fascinated by my pot pie recipe, I'll pass along a couple of test drives we took last night. Calm down, don't get too excited. Remember your blood pressure. And yes, I'm the idiot who likes to try out new recipes on my unsuspecting guests. Wanna come over?

I'm a fan of the slow cooker for school night dinner playdates. In fact, I was able to prep most of the food the day before.

Easy Slow Cooker French Dip
lonwolf32 (from http://www.allrecipes.com/)

10.5 oz can condensed french onion soup
10.5 oz can beef broth
12 oz can/bottle beer
4lb rump roast

Dump everything into the slow cooker on low for 7 hours. Let rest, slice and arrange on toasted french rolls with the au jus the meat cooked in. Voila, dinner is served.

Smoked Turkey Wrapped Asparagus
Ellie Krieger (from http://www.foodtv.com/)

Asparagus
Smoked Turkey
Olive Oil

Trim ends of asparagus (just bend and it will snap where it should be trimmed). Shave the large end of the stalks with a peeler. Coat asparagus with olive oil. Wrap 1/2 slice of smoked turkey (or smoked tofurkey in my case) around the center of the asparagus. Roast at 400 for 10 min.

Annie's Fruit Salsa with Cinnamon Chips
Ann Page (from http://www.allrecipes.com/)

2 Golden Delicious apples, peeled and chopped
3 Kiwi, peeled and chopped
1 lb fresh strawberries, chopped
8 oz fresh raspberries
3 T fruit preserves (I used organic raspberry)
1 T brown sugar
2 T sugar

I made it a day ahead so I put some lemon juice on the apple chunks to keep them from browning. Just mix everything and refrigerate. I made the cinnamon chips with flour tortillas cut in wedges, sprayed with Pam and dredged in cinnamon sugar. Bake at 350 for 8-10 min.

I can't honestly tell you how the french dips turned out because I didn't eat them. That's the curse of cooking meat when you're a vegetarian I suppose! Jeff's no help, he gave them his usual "fine" review. So on to the dishes that I did eat. The asparagus was delish and oh so simple. Definitely a recipe to repeat. But my fav has to be the dessert. And it's not that unhealthy! In fact, you could leave out the sugar and use all-fruit preserves and it would be down right good for you. I also made herbed roasted potatoes but that's not rocket science so I'll save you the recipe boredom.

Well, that was our dinner playdate in a nutshell. Simple food. New friends. Good conversation. And hey, the babies even looked at each other once or twice.