It was pretty tranquil for the most part, mainly because I didn't attempt to go anywhere today. Saturday, I went with the Roomie and some of her friends to a bbq and made some deviled eggs, which went pretty quickly.
One of my roomie's friends works at a local bakery and made an out-of-this-world strawberry rhubarb pie. I was actually a little sad when we left and there was still about half the pie left: sooooooo very very good!
Our hosts also had the cutest puppy we all kept picking up and passing around.
And then we actually got to roast marshmallows for S'MORES!!!!!! This is a little bit of an obsession of mine, or at least marshmallows are. I just love marshmallows in general. I don't eat Peeps, but love making them grow in the microwave. I recently taught one of my house managers this trick. =]
Also, it seems like every time we've thrown a party or had more than four people over, I buy s'mores makings because we have a fire pit out back and telescoping toasting forks (yeah, I totally went all out and splurged when I saw them in the dollar bin at Target.) And yet, we have never toasted marshmallows in the backyard. But we got to do it this weekend in someone else's back yard (hooray for not having to clean up the fire!) Plus, as with the grilled margarita shrimp from last night, everything automatically tastes better when cooked on a stick over an open flame! =]
So for tonight, I decided what could be more American than steak and and potatoes? Yesterday, I made a blackberry-basil sauce to go over the lemon sorbet I made (that's a whole other post unto itself.) So I took some of the sauce, added it to some fresh-squeezed lime juice, and added more basil, and then let two chuck steaks I got for cheap marinate. Meanwhile, Roomie popped some potatoes in the toaster oven.
Earlier in the day, I also attempted to make pitas using the bread machine and found a recipe that I thought would use up the rest of my whole wheat flour. It would have helped if I actually still had some whole wheat flour.=P So I just substituted in some more all-purpose, figuring it would be better than the rye. The dough was still really loose when I took it out of the bread machine for shaping and baking, so I rolled it out with more flour before I divided it up and let it rest on the baking sheets. Yeah, it didn't really make pitas, but they were lovely little bread rounds and still great for breaking up and dipping into the fried hummus I made yesterday.
It was a fantastic little appetizer to munch on while I grilled up the steaks and the home fries, the earlier baked potatoes with vidalia onion (which I was able to cut up without so much as a tear, much less my eyes swelling shut par usual), a little bit of garlic and some olive oil.
Our friend who joined us for dinner brought over a lovely fresh salad with chunks of beautiful ripe tomato, cucumber, red onion and avocado in a little bit of Italian salad dressing.
It was such a good meal, a pretty meal, especially with the salad our friend made:
After, the three of us took the dogs up to Lincoln Park to watch the fireworks they do there and the ones on the Mall. As we walked up, the sky filled in all directions with fireworks, absolutely amazing!!!! And we could see the ones from the Mall, just on the edge of the tree line, which was great while also watching the fireworks above us. However, quickly learned that the dogs were not the biggest fans of all the noise. But I think next year will be a picnic in the park for the fireworks since we saw at least five different shows going on. Fireworks, a bottle of wine, some cheese, fried hummus, fresh bread, some fruit and veggies, and, oh yeah, some bug spray (may have forgotten that tonight; anyone know if taking a benadryl would help with the itching?)
So now I'm laying in my air conditioned bed typing and watching the neighbors set off some fountains in the back alley, along with some other fireworks still going, especially since they're now breaking out my favorites, the waterfalls!
So here's some videos we took of tonight:
Hope everyone had a great, and safe, Fourth!
No comments:
Post a Comment