Fall Fun!

We're gonna play a little game. Guess which story is correct:
Story 1:
So our first Second Friday dinner-guest-party was a huge success! Everything turned out perfect. Absolutely nothing went wrong. We even had enough time to buy and train doves to fly out every time we entered the room. It was beyond glorious. The President even called to let us know that he thanks us for our wonderful contribution to society. 

Story 2:
So our first Second Friday dinner-guest-party was a success! Some things didn't quite turn out as we planned. A few times we joked about cancelling it (it was 80% joking).  But our guests were happy and hey that's all that matters!

Did you guess the first story? You're wrong. 

To put it in its most optimistic light, this was a learning experience. We learned quite a few things.
1. NEVER use a tamale pot for chili, you WILL burn your beans. 
2. Burnt beans smell like cigarettes. 
3. After boiling 3lbs. of beans for 1 hour in 9 tablespoons of salt, don't forget to rinse said beans.
4. When doubling/tripling/quadrupling recipes, not EVERY ingredient needs to be doubled/tripled/quadrupled. Stupid salt. 
5. Meltdowns don't un-burn your beans. 
6. Hard beans require extra water and a covered boil.
7. When you quadruple a recipe don't forget about increasing boiling time. (This ones about beans again)
8. Don't attempt to toast bread when freaking out about trying to make everything else. 


As you can see we started taking pictures of our step-by-step process

Here's the salt for the beans. This was definitely our first mistake.

Makin' our chili paste! This wasn't completely by the recipe. Possibly another place we  went wrong. 

Chili paste. 

When we thought things were still going well. 

WHERE WE STARTED TO GO WRONG. Just sayin'.

These little suckers caused us so much emotional pain. But we love beans so we forgive them.


But we quickly realized that if we wanted this entire meal done by the time guests arrived pictures just would/could not be taken. 


So a quick breakdown:

Chili: Turned out way way too salty. The beans were still a little too hard but otherwise not bad. Any praise we got for the chili we quickly disregarded. We do thank you for your pity compliments.

 Pumpkin Cornbread:  This guy stole the show. As salty as the chili was, the cornbread made up for it in deliciousness. Seriously, so good.

                                   

Baked Apples: We threw the whole do-it-yourself apple thing to the wind and made everyone's the same. People loved it. 

 
Hot Chocolate: Homemade, thick, delicious chocolate goodness. (Tasted even more divine when heated the next day and additional milk added).  And yes that's about 9 bars of dark chocolate all chopped up. 


Smores: Messy gooey fun around a campfire. What could go wrong there?

So all in all it was an awesome time. We were stressed and questioned why we even did the party, but as soon as our guests arrived we knew it was going to be a hit! We want to say thank you to all the people who made it out, sorry yet again for the salty chili, but we promise next time it will be even better! 


Check out the photos below for the awesome candid pictures of the party:

 Professional recipe reader to the right          -->                        And professional measuring spoon reader to the left    <---- 


                                                                                       We were keeping each other sane....

Pouring cornmeal takes two people! 

The centerpiece! 

Our first brave guest. 

Kelsey's co-worker Justin, and his girlfriend, Hope. No, it's not snowing... Those dots can't be explained. Are they ghosts?

Best friends forever! 

"Hmmm... Yeah, I don't know." That was said a lot. 

Helping core the apples! Thanks, Dianne!

Making the apples. 

By the fire!

So yay for Second Friday fall fun! What a party.