Last night we hosted our exchange student’s farewell graduation BBQ. It was a really nice party – lots of pleasant young people, and one whole family, our neighbors from up the street, who also have a graduating senior daughter, so there were some grown ups for me & Mark.
We asked people to bring something to drink, or meat for the grill – a 2-liter bottle of Sprite showed up, but no meat, but that was all for the better, because it meant people ate all the other food. Joëlle made some tortilla roll ups with Boursin, smoked salmon, and lettuce, that everyone loved. Her other recipe was my favorite of the party – potatoes with herbed butter in foil packets roasted on the grill – so grilled potatoes with butter – the best. She also made a giant fresh mozzarella and tomato salad – just enough of it left to make some pizza, one night soon. I made a pasta salad with garbanzos and and feta and salami and garlic scapes and sun-dried tomatoes – I doubled the recipe, 1 1/2 pounds of pasta, and I should have stuck to the single, 3/4 pound of pasta, batch – we’ll be eating it for days (like tonight). The crême caramel I was worried about was fine, just not very pretty for serving. Again if I’d made less in a smaller pan, it would’ve been better. The two peach & raspberry jam galettes, 24 biggish slices in all, were consumed, giving Mark further proof for his idea that I should open a desserts-only café. I also made a sour cream dip that was really good on the snap peas from my CSA box – that’s where the garlic scapes came from, too. I’ll be having veggies & dip for lunch this week, too.
I brought over all the director chairs from E. Wash, and we set them up with tables and grills in the driveway. Joelle made a Spotify playlist and we connected her computer to one of the Bose radios and pointed it out the window for music. And we made an alcohol free sangria with tea and fruit juice with strawberries, oranges and cherries floating in it.
Pasta salad from the trapeze artists’ wedding – the one last night looked a lot like this
