Party Time!

Recently, I was blessed to celebrate my birthday with some amazing people!

Some new friends, some friends for many beautiful years, but all treasured.

Ultimately, the purpose was to fellowship with friends and thank each on of them for touching my heart with their life.  But, what to serve?  The standard chips and queso dip, wings, cheese cubes?  No!  

You can have a party with clean food and have an enjoyable time.  As a matter of fact, may people commented on how tasty everything was. I really wish I would have take a picture before the festivities began, but, friends started arriving, and who could blame a girl for wanting to spend time with friends!

Here is what we served:

Chicken Sate with Peanut Dipping Sauce
(use organic tamari sauce instead of fish sauce, unless you can find organic fish sauce, and tamari sauce instead of soy sauce and use palm sugar instead of brown sugar)

Southwest Three Bean Dip

Homemade Hummus
(dried chickpeas much it much, much creamier, and half the tahini sauce!)

Fresh Summer Rolls
(actually ended up ordering these from a local Thai restaurant as I ran out of time.
I use chicken instead of shrimp and use Tamari sauce instead of soy, and honey instead of sugar)

Cilantro Lime Sweet Potato Wedges
(you need to scroll down a big, but there are some other yummy recipes there!)

Antipasto Sausage Skewers
(make SURE to use all natural sausage with no nitrates or nitrites)

Cherry Tomatoes stuffed with Chicken Apple Salad
(these were a little bland at first, so I added a little salt, extra lemon juice and a little smoked paprika, I
use canola oil mayonnaise)

Also had many celery sticks, carrot sticks, sweet pepper sticks, and radishes on hand for dipping, along with gluten-free crackers.

Oven Roasted Salsa with 
Organic Blue Corn Tortilla chips
(my own recipe, many people asked for it!)

10-12 Roma tomatoes (depending on size), halved

1 Anaheim chili pepper, halved

2 Poblano peppers, halved

1-2 jalapeño peppers, with seeds (depending on how spicy you want it)

1 red onion, quartered

4 cloves garlic, smashed

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

juice of 1lime (or 2 if you want it a little more bite)

pink Himalayan sea salt and pepper to taste

1. Place tomatoes, peppers, red onion, and garlic cut side down on a roasting pan, or 1/2 sheet, roast in oven until tops are charred.

2.  Remove from onion and let cool, then place in a food processor with remaining ingredients and process until not large chunks remain.  If it is thicker than you you desire, add a little water and process.  

3.  Enjoy!

Strawberry "Cheesecake"
[this needed a little more flavor,
so I tripled the amount of lemon and doubled the
"liquid sweetener (but used 1/2 honey and 1/2 maple syrup)]

This cake represents a doubled recipe

Last, but certainly not least, 

Mojitos!

(we used diet Hansen's instead of making a simple syrup and club soda,

and multiplied by 20 and just put it all in a drink dispenser)

Already looking forward to next year!