Dinner party

I gave my sewing machine and embroidery needle the day off yesterday and turned instead to kitchenly things. So unlike me. I'm not a big fan of cooking. But Mr. Gadget and I wanted to invite the neighbor ladies over for dinner, as a friendly gesture, and to thank them for keeping an eye on things here at the Calcondo when we're not here.

We decided it would be Italian night, since I have a few pasta dishes I can make with confidence. The first course was an antipasto.

See there, over on the right? That's not an errant olive. That's a quarter. This was one big antipasto. I tried to find a local deli where I could order one ready-made but was unsuccessful. They were either too big, too small, or too pathetic. So I bought the ingredients and added my own roasted red peppers--my late mother-in-law's recipe. Well, no, not exactly. She didn't have recipes. I learned from watching her, and now I don't have recipes of my own.Next came the stuffed shells--another dish from my non-recipe file. Part of my secret is the special bottled sauce. No sauce-from-scratch for me. All the work involved would take away from precious crafting time. You can see the ladies were small eaters. They were ever-so-courteous to leave Mr. G and I some left-overs for tonight. I've already revved up my sewing machine.

Next up was my special blueberry cheesecake. How simple could it be? I already had a nice piece of blueberry-colored fabric, and no baking was involved.

I'm just kidding. There was a real cheesecake, made from my sister-in-law's recipe....sort of. I may have tweaked it a little. I like a nice substantial graham cracker crust, so I added more crumbs. Then I added some melted butter, as called for, plus a nice big spoonful of brown sugar. This cheesecake is so good that everyone always asks for the recipe. But when I start typing it up, there's a half page of ingredients and a page and a half of tweaks....and I quickly realize it would be much easier just to send them to the fabric store.