Eh, at least some of it came out well

Current mood: dinner parties take work!!

Yesterday's menu:
- cassava bread
- broccoli and toasted almond soup
- spinach salad w/ balsamic vinaigrette dressing
- corn bread
- angel hair pasta tossed with tomatoes, chicken, olives, and mushrooms
- brownies

The brownies are easy, because I'm lazy and bake from the box. Now, this is a choice, as I've baked brownies from scratch many a time, but really do find the taste and convenience factor of the boxed mixes to be acceptably high. The only trick is to pull them out early enough, so they will be fudgy and gooey, and they came out particularly well this time. I'd threatened to stop making brownies, because the past few times, hardly any got eaten, so this time my friends managed to convince me that they still deserve brownies by consuming half the pan on the spot!

The soup was also good, though I made the mistake of trying the blend hot liquid (ow! d*mn! splat everywhere!), so it wasn't as smooth as I'd wanted it to be. This got raves, as I intended it to (some of my friends are very reliable for kudos!). The pasta was meh; could probably have used some fresh herbs, and the corn bread was a tad dry. This was sort of a puzzler for me, as I always use the same recipe and it usually comes out better, but perhaps my cornmeal is getting old (um, I think it's a holdover from my last apartment, and since my insurance is coming due again...) and cranky. The salad was fine (even grape tomatoes have flavor in the summer!)

The real disappointment was the cassava bread. I'd baked them the night before, and was pleased at their springy texture and cheesy flavor, but it turns out that they don't age well at all. Even stored in an airtight box, they went stale far quicker than I'd anticipated Ah well, next time I won't cut corners and I'll bake them fresh(er).