Open House!

This has been a crazy 3 days for me! Every day I'm up at 4 am, preparing for my day, searching for recipes or working on my menus or initial food order. Then I'm grabbing up a mess of papers/notes/binders and I'm out the door. I've had a couple of 7 am morning meetings in McDonald's at the half point of my commuter journey just so I could keep in touch with my HL friends before I drive on to my school. So exciting but tiring hours with my commute even longer than before. But dear friends let me tell you it's worth it! It's so worth it! I've smiled more at work in my first 3 unofficial days than I have smiled in the last month atleast! Wednesday night once I got home I quickly grabbed some decorative items and serving pieces to use at the school for a small open house Thursday evening. Our conference room/breakroom is lovely. My photos don't do it justice. And yes I scrunched up the fabric in that tacky fashion! This is what happens when Chef has ten minutes to set up *smiles* No one cared! They were interested in the food!

I knew that chalkboard tray would come in handy, I grabbed it at the last minute going out the door ~ good thing I remembered the chalk!

What's that in the chaffing dish? Why it's good ole' batter dipped, deep fried green beans with spicy ranch sauce! Yum! These were a huge hit!

Thank you to my dear husband for snatching up that piece of granite display when they were discontinued at his work. He thought I could display food on it, SMART man my husband! And the cracker spread? Roasted Red Pepper, super easy and very yummy. I'll give you the recipe!

Not as beautifully presented as I would have liked but it was well received and most importantly my new boss *Cindy* loved it! Now for that Roasted Red Pepper Spread...

1 jar of roasted red peppers drained

about 16 oz of cream cheese but you could certainly and very easily with great results get by with less then just increase it to taste and consistency that works for you!

a touch of fresh lemon juice

some paprika

granulated garlic

and that's about it as far as I can remember because I literally just cut up the cream cheese and tossed it all into the robocoup and blended. then I tasted it and added a bit more of garlic and wished all the while I had ordered more spices for my kitchen! If I had had it there I would have added a few shakes of Tabasco for the flavor and bite ~ not for heat! But everyone loved it and it had a nice balanced flavor.

I've discovered that sometimes simplier really IS better.

And this is how I do it most times, I just toss it together and wonder afterwards what was it I put in that? So I promise in future to take more care to semi accurately recall proportions and such for y'all.