dinner guests

last night scott and i had bob, becky and jamie to the house for dinner. i tried to leave work early - ended up not being early enough - to run to the grocery store, get started on the food and do some quick cleaning around the house.

the cleaning dropped off the priority list. i wish it hadn't, because after everybody left scott came from the bathroom and mentioned that we forgot to restock the toilet paper! how mortifying.

but as it was, i was running late getting dinner ready. i'd already shopped for pw's enchilada recipe from her cookbook, so i carefully defrosted a package of beef while i also made the brownies with coffee frosting from her cookbook. when the beef was fully defrosted, i opened the package only to discover that it was not ground beef, but tenderloin. the beef was from the longhorn steer tyrone, and all packaged the same, and i didn't even think to examine it more closely. so then i was way behind,  starting over with a frozen block of what i was sure was ground beef. i barely had it started thawing, and i see bob and becky getting out of their truck in front of my house. thirty minutes early, and scott wasn't yet home from work. and i still had to make the black bean and corn salad, chop lettuce for a tossed salad, and make the frosting and the mexican rice. turns out, i ditched the rice.

thankfully, it took scott and bob a while to get the stovepipe installed, and that saved me. brownies came out of the oven, enchiladas went in, black bean salad was mixed together with dressing - i was praying the corn thawed out enough before meal time, some dishes were done and i whipped up the frosting before setting the table, getting ice and setting out a pitcher of water. all in the space of an hour and a half.

i really like having company over, even though it can be hectic. since both scott and i like to entertain and have dinner with friends, i will have to learn to keep the house in a more consistent state of clean, and shop more carefully to have several meals ready to go from my cupboards and pantry. our company usually comes on weeknights, because our weekends are never free, and with working full-time it's hard to properly prepare all in one day. especially when i sleep an extra hour in the morning because i don't know we're having dinner guests that night...

so, i intended to take some photos of the recipes and post them, but the hurry also dropped that off the priority list, so i apologize.

the enchiladas tasted fine, but would have been labor intensive, had i followed the recipe exactly. she makes her own tortillas for them, which i'm sure are worth it, but my store-bought tortillas in the fridge were sure easier. she also dipped each tortilla in the enchilada sauce before filling and wrapping them, and i also skipped that.

the coffee frosting brownies - i forget their real name - were really good. a nice balance between chocolate cake and brownies, and the frosting had just a hint of salt with the coffee flavor, which makes it addictive. at least to me. i hope there are some left when i get home!

i left casper early this morning for laramie, and now i'm sitting at the wyoming water association annual meeting for the next three days. hoping to meet up with long-time iowa friends judy and avery rogers while i'm here, as well as scott's and my neice, tavy, who attends uw.