Impromptu cocktail party for the girls at my house last night. Carrie, Marisha, Eve, Katy, Karen & even Chrissy (who I didn't know was home from London) dropped over. I had a bottle of pomegranate liquor that has been hanging around for ages and I wanted to try it and a couple of appetizer recipes. For some reason, my recent vacation reset my cooking gene. There were quite a few things changed by this trip but more on that later.

So I had planned to do all the prep work on Thursday night but didn't get home until late and ended up doing everything on Friday. I was still mixing up the mushroom stuffing when Marisha arrived. She brought me a beautiful serving tray as a gift for no reason. It's beautiful - I love it! She said there was a complete line so I asked where she got it. Laughing she said, "you'll never believe it, Winners!" This just confirms my belief that I need to go to Winners more.




So, my planning and organizational skills are rusty but it was a fun night and the food I'd made - guacamole, shrimp skewers and stuffed mushrooms - disappeared so the recipes were a success. I'm going to entertain more this summer, I think. I just need to get that rooftop deck built so we can do it outside!

We mostly drank wine all night but after a few glasses, I decided it was time to try the pomegranate mojito recipe. (ps new rule - friends don't let friends blender drunk). I ran up to the computer to check a website that had recipes, ran back downstairs and muddled the mint leaves in the glass as directed, forgot part of the recipe so ran back upstairs, ran back downstairs and added the rum and pomegranate, ran back upstairs to check if there was anything missing, ran back downstairs and threw everything in the blender with ice - mint leaves and all. When I poured the mix into glasses, the chopped up mint just floated on the top like a crust of mown grass. I didn't have any straws so just handed the drinks out. I'd had too much wine to have thought about straining the mint off and everyone was too polite to say anything. They sat there drinking it with green goo stuck to their lips & front teeth. Now those are good friends!

(btw, I know you're thinking,"why not just print off the recipe?" but they're those dumb flash animations that can't be printed or cut & pasted.)

On a sidenote, why do you always get the good hair day when you're not doing anything special? My hair looks fabulous right now and that's not just the hangover talking!

This afternoon Ryan came over and we walked down to the lake. It's so warm we're wearing shorts and t-shirts. There were deer in the marsh and then this crazy fish carnage on the little beach where the marsh empties into the lake. Usually, it flows out through an opening but I guess the waves this past week built up a temporary wall of rocks. It looks like the fish (we couldn't identify the species) got stuck on the marsh side and tried to swim across the rock bridge. There were dead fish everywhere and there were still a bunch of live ones thrashing around in the shallow water, apparently trying to tunnel their way to the lake.
Afterward, we walked over to the grocery store, made some dinner (not fish) and we watched a video my boss had given me on Guatemala. She's from there and told me about a town she thinks would be good for me to visit. I asked if it was a town of single men. She laughed and said no, it's supposed to be the best place to learn Spanish. It's won all these awards because that's the town's main tourism - the entire place is geared to helping the tourist-students learn the language. We decided that if Pete has to cancel the Greece trip for any reason, we'll go to Guatemala instead. Really, the video was about 20 years old - 80s-licious - but the place looks amazing!

Also, talking about learning Spanish
got me thinking I need to do something new so I signed up for Spanish lessons at the Spanish Centre in Toronto. I start on Monday so we'll see if the trip reset my learning gene too! I'm excited. They also have merengue and salsa lessons so I'll probably sign up for those as well. I saw some pretty good salsa dancing in CR and would love to be able to do even the basic moves.