Dinner Party for Don!

Update: One of my friends just sent me her photos from the party, so I've added a few new photos to the post!

My dear friend, Don, just turned 40, so I threw a dinner party for him last night. We had a bit of a disconnect about how many people he was going to invite, so we wound up with 12 acceptances, although I only have chairs and room at the table for 8! Still, we found a solution and it was a lot of fun!

Photo of me & Don -- not that great . . but my face looks so thin that I had to post it -- freaky!! I look like a teeny girl!!

Our friend Thu is clearly making an important point here! Don looks camera-ready though!

Instead of placemats, I bought some festive wrapping paper (from K-mart!) and cut it into placemat-sized rectangles. I used some of the paper as napkin rings as well. You can see that above, and in the first photo.

In the photo below, you can see how we dealt with the guest-overflow! We put 7 people at the main table (only 11 wound up at the party) and four at the kiddie . . er, tatami-style. . table! Then, we switched up the seating for each course so that no one got stuck on the floor for too long.


Another wrinkle was that most of the guests are vegetarian, and I had never cooked a completely vegetarian meal for guests before. As you might know from my earlier post, I was really not sure what to make! Thanks for everyone who gave me suggestions -- that was so helpful!

I went with this really delicious salad that had arugula, shaved parmesan, grape tomatoes and pine nuts. I made the dressing from olive oil, lemon juice, lemon zest, salt, pepper and parmesan cheese. YUM!

For the entree, I made two wild mushroom lasagne. One of them is shown below. Honestly, this was really delicious and I was able to make it in advance so that I had very little to do once the guests arrived. I also served garlic bread and, of course, lots of nice red wine!

For dessert, I made a pastel de tres leches, which turned out so nicely, but I didn't get any good photos of it! Darn! I also served fresh berries to go with, or to enjoy solo.

Update! One of our friends took some good photos of the cake! Am adding them in here! Why do I look like I have a double chin?!

All in all, the dinner was a lot of fun, people had a great time, and I think Don really enjoyed celebrating his b-day in this way! One thing that was interesting was that I hadn't seen a few of the guests since the last dinner I had for Don, which was in the summer, just a short while after I started Boot Camp. It was nice to find out that people really noticed how much more fit I look now, and that I had shed quite a few pounds. NSV!! (I have to take my NSVs. . not having any SVs lately!!)