a great party - but it's still winter!!!!

we went to a fantastic St. Patrick's Day/Surprise Birthday party on saturday night - we had a hoot! but it's still winter....

we made sure to be well-fed the day of the party because we knew we needed our strength and we did!

 the casear salad on the left is jambaloney's...he doesn't eat croutons and didn't want shrimp. that's my caesar on the right...both had home-made caesar dressing on them using real anchovies. oh yes kids, we stockpile anchovies. you want to make the best roast or stew, chop up a couple of anchovies and chuck them in - the anchovies really bring out the flavour of beef.

anyway - at the party - supposed to be a St. Patrick's Day Party - and it was - the hall was beautifully decorated for Patty's Day! but a few days prior, my bestie C1 found out that our friend S's birthday was coming up and so C1 wanted to take care of all of the catering herself but asked that i bring my dip. of course i said yes!

so we all met up a little early, got the bar ready, got the food put out and then proceeded to party. S had absolutely no idea that we were going to acknowledge her birthday because we told her it was our other friend D's birthday. C1 got S a birthday card and had everyone, including S and her husband, sign the card for D - bahahahahah!

at about 10:30pm we turned the lights on and C1 got up and did a beautiful speech. S was blown away! i was sitting at the table with her husband, H, and H said "holy sh*t! i didn't see that coming" - bahahahah! C1 brought out the cake and S blew out her candles while we all sang happy birthday and then S gave a beautiful speech. it was lovely to surprise our friend like that.

then the lights went back down, the music was cranked and we all just started dancing like fools! much alcohol was consumed, people were giddy and happy moving around from table to table and talking to everyone, much more dancing and then the night ended. it was a fantastic time!

the next day, hurting like we were, we knew we needed to eat some good healthy RAW food.

that's fresh-made guacamole, salsa and parsley salad. the parsley and salsa are made with a base dressing of lemon, EVOO, ACV, a ton of garlic, cumin, cayenne and a ton of turmeric. the base dressing for the guacamole is exactly the same except i use a ton of cumin in it and the juice of a lime.

we opted for a supper of leftover kaftas, dill sauce, salsa and hummus.

the next day though dinner was a tuna pasta salad - heavy on the tuna. with parsley and olives.

we needed to fill jambaloney with some carbs as we were expecting another snow storm on monday. this has been the snow-stormiest, grayest, long lasting snow winter we have experienced here - it's awful! we got another foot- foot and a half of snow and jambaloney went out on tuesday and started up the tractor. over the past 2 days he has got us almost ploughed out....just about 10ft left at the bottom of the driveway but the city plow went by and dumped a pile right at the end of the driveway. so he's leaving that for tomorrow. except that it's snowing - AGAIN! arghghghggh!

oh well, ya just got to grin and bear it. i am looking so forward to april!