South of the Border BBQ

p.s. still time to enter my giveaway!!

There’s always been a Memorial Day weekend BBQ at my place. It started…I’m thinking 5 years ago when I was living in Somerville with my bff Jocelyn! Brian’s birthday usually falls around then so we had a bbq/party and the tradition stuck.

Last year, it was our first big BBQ at our new House with our new patio furniture…and a little more tame than years past ;)

Recap of last years BBQ

This year was different. The Half Marathon was that weekend and the last thing I needed was to be overly stressed by hosting a party…but I still wanted a party!!

Solution = SMALL party :)

I find, at least for myself, I get the most stressed about having people over when I have multiple “groups” of friends coming. They all might know each other, but I constantly feel like I need to spend time and chat with everyone while still trying to get all the last minute food details ready.

I’m much more relaxed once everyone has eaten haha.

So in order to have a stress-free gathering I stuck to a small group of people…9, including Brian and myself.

Although, I still managed too make enough for 20…oh well! Leftovers!!

The Menu was entirely inspired by the June issue of Cooking Light!

There were SO many awesome sounding Mexican-ish dishes in there, that I decided to have a Mexican themed BBQ!

The Menu:

Drinks

Minted Lemon-Lime Watermelon Aqua Fresca (non-alcoholic, I had two lovely pregnant ladies that day)
Skinny Girl Margaritas!
Brian’s beer (he has 2 varieties on tap in the basement)

Snacks

Homemade Guac – I special requested my friend to make it since she uses our FAVORITE recipe from the Barefoot Contessa.
Mango Salsa – homemade by another guest!

Main Dishes

Flank Steak Tacos – made the recipe for the steak and had the options out for people to make tacos: tortillas, cheese, salsa, sour cream, avocado
Ancho Chili Chicken – a favorite family recipe! Already on the blog!!

Sides

Cilantro Lime Rice – made by a guest
Baked Black Beans with Chorizo – LOVED this recipe, the chorizo gives it so much flavor.
Grilled Corn on the Cob – never got around to making the jalapeño butter, but I bet it’s delicious.
Pasta salad – made by a guest, minus the chicken
Fruit Salad – made by a guest

Dessert!!

Margarita Ice-Cream Sandwiches – I wasn’t in love with the sound of these at first, but they looked so cute and went perfectly with the theme!
SOOO happy I made them, they are delicious!!
Dessert Nachos! – totally came up with this one in my head and I am obsessed with how they came out! Definitely going to do a full post on these :)

The plan:

Friday:

• Shop for all ingredients and drinks. Also assess if you need any paper plates, or other disposable items. I already had enough at home.


• Clean!!


• Make cookie dough for ice cream sandwiches (it has to chill before baking)
  

Saturday:

• bake off cookies for ice cream sandwiches
  


• make marinade for chicken, rub for steak, and get all meats into large Ziploc bags to marinate overnight


• make Ancho chili sauce
  


• Make/Prepare beans to be baked the next day. Don't add cheese, tomatoes, or green onion yet.


• Make simple syrup, and prep lime juice for watermelon aqua fresca


• chop up watermelon


• Prepare tortilla chips for dessert nachos
  

Sunday:

• Run half marathon (if that’s what you’re doing that morning)


• come home, shower, and get ready


• final clean up/pick up


• husk corn


• Guests Arrive!!


• Fire up the grill and start grilling the meats, then corn


• Place toppings on beans then bake


• Make your friends a batch of Watermelon Aqua Fresca
  


• After everyone eats, sneak back to the kitchen to make the chocolate sauce and whip the cream for the desserts :)


• ENJOY!

It was a fun low-key, relaxing day. No one stayed too late, we did a quick clean up, and were able to crash at a reasonable hour considering we had got up around 6 that morning!

How do you handle the stress of being the hostess?? No matter how stressed I get, I still LOVE having people over! Usually my problem is a bite off more than I can chew…we probably didn’t need as much food, especially 2 desserts…oh well! I’ve been enjoying mini ice cream sandwiches all week!

Happy Friday!! I have my first dance performance tonight for the company I am in up in NH. This is sort of a practice performance for just one of the pieces, but still…a little nervous :) Our big show isn’t until September.

Green Thumb Part 2

Before I get to more of our yard projects…

Thank you so much for all the congratulations :)  It’s such a relief to have that behind me.

Happy 4th of July weekend everyone!!!  I’m currently up in NH at the inlaws house!  Today is Brian’s sister’s bday, and tomorrow is one of his best friend’s birthday’s so we are usually up here for the 4th.

Before we headed up north, I went to a steamy HOT yoga class this morning.  I’m running a 5-mile road race tomorrow morning, so I ‘figured yoga would be a good pre-race workout.  Let’s hope this years run goes a little better than last years!!  Last year was my first road race ever…and this thing has HUGE hills, so I really didn’t know what I was getting into.  Although it’s going to be H-O-T tomorrow so I don’t think I’m going for any records haha!

After yoga I grabbed some Basil from our garden to add to my breakfast :)

I give you Tomato + Basil + Goat Cheese + egg sandwich

Oh yeah…

I added some chopped basil right into the egg and then a couple leaves fresh on the sandwich.

   

I bet this would be delish with a little slice of mozzarella as well :)

I see a little yellow summer squash starting to grow!!  Can’t wait to have veggies to eat!!

Now back to the subject at hand…

One of our other tasks that I was excited to tackle at the house was my attempt to DIY-update an old set of outdoor chairs and a table that I received as a hand-me-down from mom. 

Beautiful aren’t they?

This was always part of my master plan for the patio.  I wanted to spend some $$ on a nice conversational set (i.e. our new sectional!), and then try to update the old table and chairs instead of buying new ones. 

I remembered reading this post on Young House Love…another favorite blog of mine!  Didn’t seem too hard, and we really didn’t have anything to lose.  The furniture couldn’t really get much worse ;)

Update old Patio Furniture

This is some serious paint.  In the end we ended up using 5 cans of this spray paint for the 4 chairs and table. 

After reading the instructions from the YHL post, I knew I didn’t want this stuff on my skin, so I made sure to cover up :)

H.O.T.

Now take that image even further and imagine me with blue rubber gloves and saftey glasses…yeah, sexy. 

Lots of fumes, bug spray, weird looks from passer-bys and neighbors, and a few days of drying later…we had ourselves a not-too-shabby patio dining set!

My next step is to find cute colorful outdoor seat cushions, but so far no luck.

There are a few paint drips on the chairs (it was hard getting in between each chair slat), but it’s not too noticeable…and again, a MUCH improvement over the original.               

Other things blooming…our roses! (well these pictures are from like a month ago when the roses  were blooming…it’s been pretty dry the past few weeks!)

I need to cut myself some blooms more often…so pretty, and they grow back SO quick when the weather is good!

And finally my gardening themed iphone cover haha :)

Well I need to get my butt into bed!  Here’s hoping I can get through the hot, hilly, run tomorrow!

Hope you all have a fun 4th! 

Green Thumb Part 1

Time for an update on our yard!

The month of May seemed to be all about yard work…probably the most I’ve ever done :)  I mean weeding alone can occupy many many full days and you’ll never be done!!

We’ve been at our house for 1 year this month!  I’d love to share some of the adventures/projects as new homeowners.

#1 – Vegetable Garden

I always knew I wanted to have a veggie garden.  We didn’t move in early enough last year to really get one going, although we did have a few tomato plants last year and those are always great to have.

We did tomatoes again in the same spot, as that worked out pretty well and we’d have more room for other veggies in the new garden.

 

(this pic was from a few weeks ago.  We now have some green tomatoes sprouting and they’ve grown a lot!)

For our new garden, we did a raised bed.  We build the box ourselves, and it’s 4’x8’ and 8” high. 

The area we chose gets a lot of sun throughout the day which is very important.  The plastic in the picture was there when we bought it to keep weeds at bay, so we cut around it for the bed instead of removing it.

My handyman/yard work champion

Once in place, it was time to buy some veggies! 

We had a gift card to Mahoney’s Garden Center leftover from the wedding (great gift idea btw!!), so we headed there one Saturday morning.

They had SOOOO many things to choose from, it was a hard decision and we really didn’t know how many different items we could fit into our garden.  

Definitely Basil

Look at all these gorgeous basil leaves!!!!!!!!!

This is what an asparagus plant looks like

I bought 1 to see what would happen, but we wont see anything from the plant until at least next Spring.

Thought this was interesting…

A Stevia plant!   Didn’t get one though.

In the end we had a full cart of veggies and herbs

• cucumbers
• green, red, and yellow peppers
• carrots
• mesclun lettuce
• red onion
• zucchini
• summer squash
• asparagus
• snap peas
• basil
• cilantro
• parsley
• thyme
• oregano
• dill
• rosemary
• mint
• chives
• sage

And into the ground they went…

Aside from 1 year with tomatoes, we are both gardening newbies!  So we are figuring that this year is more of a learning experience than anything…but I do hope we have some success!

So far things are going pretty good…not great, but good.  I really need to read up more about each plant and how to take care of them.  It’s also only been 3 weeks so I don’t know how much growth to expect yet.

If anyone has any tips for any of the items we are growing it would be greatly appreciated!! :)

Summer Kick-Off

This was one crazy busy weekend!! 

First I want to rewind about a year ago…we bought a house.  Said house had a feature in the back yard that made the decision to make an offer that much easier…

(this picture is from last year when we bought it).

A cabana!  Plus a great patio, path, outdoor lighting, and a yard!

We knew this would be a perfect spot for parties and spending time with friends, but last summer was so crazy with moving and the wedding, that we never had a party back here…until yesterday.

We invited a bunch of our friends, some who hadn’t even seen the house yet, over for a BBQ to officially break in the cabana and put our new patio furniture to use!

Obviously there was MORE than enough food…when am I going to learn how to judge the right amount??  I mean I’d always rather have too much than too little…but that can get expensive after a while.

The Menu

Appetizers/Snacks:
*=brought by a friend

• Guacamole and chips* (she used my FAVORITE recipe)
• bean dip and chips*
• caprese skewers*
• a humus/tomato/feta layered dip with pita chips*
• fresh pineapple

Main Course + Sides:

• Salad
• Sesame Noodles
• Potato Salad*
• Baked Beans*
• Pasta Salad*
• Grilled Veggies
• Marinated Steak Tips
• BBQ Chicken
• Burgers
• Grilled Corn on the Cob

Desserts:

• Homemade Whoopie Pies*
• Cup Cakes
• Lemon Squares
• S’mores Brownies
• Raspberry Choc-Chip Oatmeal Muffins (must get recipe from my friend!!)

Drinks:

• Various beers (mostly summer brews!)
• Brian’s latest Homebrew
• Sangria
• Wine
• Soda

Yeah…a lot of food!

One of the dishes I made was my aunt’s recipe for Sesame Noodles!  I haven’t had these in many many years but I remember loving them and this was an easy thing to pre before hand.

Recipe post to come! 

The finished product came out pretty good if I do say so myself.

One of the other items I made were lemon squares from this Eating Well recipe.

When Brian wasn’t busy acting as my Sous Chef (i.e. veggie chopper), he set up the yard.

You can add the post about how we painted those black chairs and table to my growing list of things I need to blog about!!

And a canopy tent!

I picked this bad boy up for just $30 at Wal-Mart.  There was thundershowers in the forecast and I was SO worried about the rain!!!

However we totally LUCKED out!!  There was a very short shower lasting about 4 minutes, and other than that it was sunny and perfect :)

Then people started to arrive and then it was go-go-go all day and night!

How beautiful do these Caprese skewers look!  My friend Jen made these.

The BEST Guacamole…I recommend this recipe to anyone looking to make some guac!

My favorite God Daughter Riley!!  She’s the cutest :)     

Some of the girls….hey who gave Riley the beer bottle!!??!

My Sparking Sangria…this was really really good!!!

    

I was running around like a crazy person until we ate, so I didn’t get the best pictures of the food…or even all the food but I got some!!

BBQ Chicken made with a rub and then bbq sauce added at the end

Potato Salad…another Ina recipe!  I made a special request for this salad, it’s my FAVORITE potato salad.

My salad…it’s another favorite recipe that I make a lot for parties.  So simple:

• chop tomatoes and combine with chopped garlic, and let those to sit and marinade for a couple hours before.
• Combine with chopped Romaine, scallions, and grated Romano Cheese.
• Dressing is equal parts lemon juice and olive oil (I do about 1/2 cup of each for a big bowl) + 1 Tbsp of dried oregano

Grilled Veggies!

Grilled Corn…to save time I pre-steamed the corn a bit, then we just put the ears directly on the grill for a few minutes.

Burgers. This was Brian’s creation.  To the ground beef he added fresh garlic, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, and his favorite seasoning…Emeril’s Essence.

Homemade Whoopie Pies!!!  My friend made these and they were AWESOME!

Relaxing…

You can’t tell from the pic, but we had just finished an INTENSE game of Badminton and were sweating pretty bad haha!

We also had a visitor fly in…I fed him some hot dog bun :)

Lights on.

Turned out to be a beautiful day, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. I’ll admit I was a bit frantic up until all the food was ready, but I relaxed after that. 

We really lucked out with weather as there was basically a mini-monsoon today!! 

Brian and I were so tired we left the mess until the morning…fine by me!  We also have SO many leftovers.

So what’s your favorite thing to eat or make for a BBQ???