New Years Dinner

For Christmas this year we all (yes all eight of us kids) decided to make dinner for our parents. And well as some of you know we don't like to do things by halves at our house. Nicole (the oldest sibling and the one who really did most of the work) did some planning and found recipes for almost the whole dinner. After finding quite a few she and I looked them over deciding which looked the most gourmet and delicious. So New Years day starting at about three we commenced to make an amazing dinner for our parents and Nonna, who is visiting for a bit. After two hours of madly dashing about the kitchen preparing dish after dish. We were ready. Amazingly with five girls tripping over each other in one kitchen there hadn't been any tears or arguments. Everything worked out and we were ready. We notified our "guests" that their table was ready.

For appetizers we had made Calla Lilly Crepes and Cucumber Roses. 

The original recipe for the Calla Lilies said white bread but as white bread is pretty much against my every belief we were going to try whole wheat pita pockets. Lets just say they failed. So I quickly brainstormed and came up with crepes. They worked wonderfully! Oh and so much fun to make, not to mention how yummy they are. :)

The cucumber Roses were made from thinly sliced cucumbers soaked in very salty water and rolled into a rose shape held together with toothpicks. 

They even looked a bit like lilies! 

For the first course we served Sweet Potato Soup with Cranberry Garnish. I normally hate soup but this was actually extremely good.

The Cranberry garnish added a nice touch.

The second course was my favorite. Qinua Stuffed zucchini. Brilliant. We stuffed halved zucchini with a quinua, cannallini beans, tomatos and almonds with freshly grated Parmesan sprinkled on top. Sooooooo good. :)

For our main course we served Chicken Cacciatore. Definitely not my favorite part of the meal. But it was pretty good too, not as gourmet as the rest of the food but not bad either.

For our last course we served Massaged Kale and Mango Salad. Yes, I did say massaged. And yes, I did mean massaged. We literally massaged the kale with our hands until it was soft, so no cooking just massaging. It was weird. But oh, the end product was amazing. One of the most delicious salads I have ever eaten. 

For desert we served Chocolate Raspberry Cream Pie. It had a graham cracker crust, a chocolate ganache layer and raspberry cream filling all topped with raspberry's and drizzled chocolate. It looked amazing and tasted even better.

~Alyssa <3