Yay Cooking!!

Man, I love throwing parties, because they give me the chance to play with new food ideas!

I'm trying to be gluten-free these days, so I planned the party food around that. I doubt that anyone will notice that anything is missing. Yes, except for those of you who read this and that I've mentioned it to. But you know what I mean.

Last week we went to The Mother Ship, and among all the other stuff we got, I bought a small exotic soda from Italy. It was grapefruit/strawberry. It was WAY too sweet for my taste, but it was an interesting combination. The way I make sodas these days is to take fruit juice and mix it with fizzy water (like Perrier.) So I thought, what if I make grapefruit and strawberry purees and mix with the fizzy? I also bought raspberries for the same purpose. I'll let you know how they come out!

I love apples and cheese, so I bought a log of goat cheese and some Pink Lady apples for that purpose. I'll make hummus and offer tortilla chips and veggies to dip it. I'm also straining some fabulous bulgarian yogurt. I'll mix fresh mint into it, and either mix in cucumber, or offer slices to dip it with. I got some of those great hothouse/english cukes for that. The big job today is to make gazpacho! I've been lamenting the lack of raw veggies in my diet (the enzymes they contain aid digestion) and gazpacho is a great way to get them! It's a lot of work to make, but then you have several days worth of veggies to "drink". I've also got two cantaloupes that should be fabulous, as they are sitting there smelling up my kitchen (in a good way!)

So anyway, it's a lot of light, cold, summery snacks for all the guests at Suki's party tomorrow!

Oh, yeah, I'm not sure who all reads this, but it's possible that someone would read it that wouldn't know - Sunday is Suki's first birthday, so I'm throwing her a party tomorrow evening! There will be something like 14 dogs running around my back yard... Crazy! I have two baby pools and two sprinklers for them to play in, almost 20 tennis balls, and a new HUGE rope toy for them to play with! So, of course all the food I'm making is for the humans who bring the dogs...

Okay. I have to go get in the shower and go to the chiropractor and run errands and get back here and start cooking. Happy Weekend!!