Wine, Cheese & Chocolate - could there be a better combination?

For my housemate's 21st birthday she decided to have a wine, cheese and chocolate party. Is that not the absolute best theme for a party ever?! It's BRILLIANT! Everyone brought chocolates, cakes and cheeses, and wine of course, and we ended up with a huge selection of treats. I made peanut butter chocolate truffles and the birthday girl prepared lots of toasts with cheese and honey. The party was complete with a chocolate fondue. It was just divine, the house was overflowing with the best eats.

So many extravagant truffles, Godiva and french chocolates everywhere. We literally ate and drank for hours. I managed to eat far too much of everything, and by the end of the night was feeling extremely ill. I couldn't even look at cheese or chocolate the next day without wanting to be sick. Who ever thought there could be such a thing as too much chocolate?! I am sorry stomach. Regardless of the overload, the night was nothing short of fabulous, and I can't wait to have another party with the same theme. It really is the best.

Party of Five

I am not the only one of my friends that is obsessed with food. All my housemates are, and many of my other friends. This leads to a lot of events that revolve around food (and is the reason for the next few posts). My class circle of friends and I like to take turns hosting dinner parties. We had our first one this semester a couple weeks ago. My friend and I did the cooking at my house and our three girlfriends joined us at my house. Here is the menu (random but delicious):

Crackers baked with goat cheese and honey - topped with dried cranberries and maple cashews
Butternut squash risotto
Barbequed chicken with rosemary and lemon
Coconut tapioca with melon
Grape pie

I have to say the butternut squash risotto was my favourite. My friend made it, and she baked the squash, then softened it and mixed it into the risotto while it cooked. So nice. Another friend of mine who came early to help cooking made grape pie. I had never heard of anyone doing this before and was therefore slightly skeptical. But it actually tasted pretty good! I think we covered quite a few nations with this menu - France, Italy, America and China. An evening filled with great (though very random) food, great friends and plenty of wine. I just love dinner parties.

Hallelujah!

Well you guys must have been crossing your fingers (thank you!) because the next day after my last post, my cord arrived! WAHOO! Ebay finally pulled through! It is so nice to be living in the 21st century again, I have really missed it (and studying was getting way too difficult). So now I am quite behind on my posts, I have so many pictures from the past couple weeks! I'll start by finishing up my autumn posts with this pumpkin bread I made a while ago. I used a recipe from my favourite foodblogger Emily @ Visions of Sugarplum. This is where I used the rest of that can of pumpkin from my pumpkin cookies. I've never made a pumpkin loaf before but it was really nice!

Pumpkin Loaf Recipe: Sugarplum

So I plan on posting as much as possible now, to catch up on my photos. AND can I just acknowledge that today is December 1st, and December means Christmas and Christmas means amazing holiday foods and treats! It also means tons of time to blog because tomorrow is my last day of class (hurrah!). So prepare yourselves to be bombarded with pictures of Christmasy foods - ready set GO

Computer Coma

I sincerely apologize for the lack of posts this month. The power cord to my computer died a couple weeks ago and my computer has absolutely no battery life. I used ebay for the first time and ordered a new one... but that was about 2 weeks ago and here I am still.. with no cord. Ebay: you suck. So any food updates have to wait now, which is so unfortunate because we have been making such wonderful meals and desserts lately! I will make up for this hiatus though. Classes end this week and then I'll be blogging every other day about all our Christmas goodies! So cross your fingers that my cord comes this week please! I cannot live in the stone age any longer.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

When I was little, Halloween was my favourite holiday. I still love it, even just for the costumes. We had quite a festive Halloween weekend this year, which I enjoyed profusely. From start to finish, we celebrated for the entire weekend. On Friday my housemates and I went on a really cute trip, complete with hayrides, to a farm that has a huge (and difficult) cornmaze. It was at night, so obviously ten times more fun. Afterwards there was a bonfire, marshmallow roasting and hot apple crumble, which was all needed at this point as we nearly froze that night. On the Saturday we spent hours preparing our costumes: we were four counting sheep and Little Bo Peep. How cute is that? The best part was that I got to wear my costume twice! Once to the party on Saturday, and again on Sunday as three of us participated in Trick-or-Eat. Rather than asking for candy at people's doors, we asked for food donations. But oh, how wonderful it was to go trick-or-treating again, I felt so young! And of course, some people gave us candy as well as the food.. hehe. And if that didn't make me feel like a kid, we also watched The Nightmare Before Christmas and Disney's A Halloween Treat. Yep, I'm a 7-year-old and I love it.

Now this wouldn't be a REAL post if I didn't tell you about the food we had this weekend. We made candy apples, apple cyder, and for breakfast on Halloween we made pumpkin pancakes! This was my first time making pumpkin pancakes, and I found a really good recipe (posted below) that turned out really well. The pancakes were thick with a really nice cakey texture. We ended our lovely weekend with a screening of Hocus Pocus, enjoying our apple cyder and candy apples. Mmmm I love Halloween :)

Pumpkin Pancakes (from Sweet Pea's Kitchen)

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
pinch of ground cloves
1 cup milk
6 tablespoons canned pumpkin puree
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 egg
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, ground ginger, salt, nutmeg, and a pinch of ground cloves.
In a separate bowl, stir together milk, pumpkin puree, melted butter, and egg; fold mixture into dry ingredients.
Melt some butter in a skillet over medium heat; pour in 1/4 cup batter for each pancake. Cook pancakes about 3 minutes per side; serve with butter and syrup.