{"id":19,"date":"2007-09-12T18:33:31","date_gmt":"2007-09-13T00:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carrieandben.benzinnecker.com\/blog\/?p=19"},"modified":"2009-12-01T23:40:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-02T05:40:00","slug":"my-first-real-dinner-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hottie-biscotti.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/12\/my-first-real-dinner-party\/","title":{"rendered":"My First Real Dinner Party"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The idea came to me on Thursday evening.  My husband Ben and I sometimes have special dinners on the weekends since I actually have time to cook an entire meal instead of reheating lasagna 3 nights in a row.  We were planning such an evening for Saturday, but then thought about inviting our friends Jason and Carrie over for dinner.  I started searching for recipes and found something that would be more ambitious than anything I&#8217;ve tried before&#8230;but I was ready for a challenge.  Pan seared venison with blackberry ancho sauce and sweet potato pine nut polenta.  I replaced the venison with pork tenderloin.  Cinnamon ice cream (from scratch) with Mexican shortbread cookies for dessert.  Jason and Carrie offered to bring some cheeses and a salad.<\/p>\n<p>The plan had been made&#8230;.but not executed&#8230;yet.  Saturday morning at 8 am I head to the grocery store.  I return with quite a few HEB bags and a bouquet of flowers&#8230;no dinner party would be complete without flowers.  I start with the blackberry ancho sauce&#8230;a 4 step process.  Then I start the cinnamon ice cream&#8230;also a time intensive effort.  Then the polenta.  Then the marinade for the pork.  A quick house cleaning and I was pretty much prepped and hitting the showers by 4:30 pm.\u00a0 I was ready&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Carrie and Jason get to the house at 6 pm and Jason sets out the cheeses, crackers, bread and fruit.\u00a0 I discovered that I have a deep love for Port Salut&#8230;creamy French wonderfulness.<\/p>\n<p>With Carries&#8217; help, dinner was tasty and dessert was terrific.\u00a0 The 90&#8217;s Trivial Pursuit game was good for the Hartmans&#8230;not so good for the Zinneckers.\u00a0 The pressure of hosting a dinner party has been lifted.\u00a0 What challenge will be next&#8230;hosting family Thanksgiving?!!?!<\/p>\n<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none;height:70px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/www.hottie-biscotti.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/12\/my-first-real-dinner-party\/\" send=\"false\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"400\" show_faces=\"true\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The idea came to me on Thursday evening. My husband Ben and I sometimes have special dinners on the weekends since I actually have time to cook an entire meal instead of reheating lasagna 3 nights in a row. We were planning such an evening for Saturday, but then thought about inviting our friends Jason [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p51jE-j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hottie-biscotti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hottie-biscotti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hottie-biscotti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hottie-biscotti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hottie-biscotti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hottie-biscotti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2521,"href":"https:\/\/www.hottie-biscotti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions\/2521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hottie-biscotti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hottie-biscotti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hottie-biscotti.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}