One, Two, Three, No Tradebacks!

On Friday night, I had the pleasure of attending Lizz’s birthday party which, as usual, had a fun and interesting theme. Last year, she held a “dirty shirty” party where everyone’s shirts were inappropriate, to say the least. This year, for her 30th (Ok, her 7 and a half because she’s a leap year baby), she opted for a more “grown up” theme and had a wine and beer exchange party.

The rules were simple: come to the party with either two bottles of wine or two 6-packs of beer. One bottle or 6 pack would be opened for everyone to taste, and the other stayed on the table. Everyone’s names got put in a bucket and drawn randomly, and we got to choose a bottle of wine (or beer if thats what the guest brought) to bring home!

One of the many reasons I love Lizz is that she held off on putting any of the food out until I got there, and asked that I take some good pictures, and she didn’t want anything to be eaten or ugly when I got to take the pictures! We talked before about what a good blog post the party would be…

First and foremost, there was this incredible garlicky cheese dip that Lizz baked in a loaf of bread. I’m working on getting the recipe from her, but let me tell you, in all honesty, it was the BEST dip I’ve ever had. AND it looked good!

Soon, all the guests had arrived and there were two tables of liquor set out, one of wine and one of beer. I brought the wine all the way on the left hand side of the wine table. It’s a 2008 Szoke Matyas & Zoltan Matra Irsai Oliver. I have no idea what that means, but I know that it’s a DELICIOUS Hungarian wine that smells a bit like roses, yet tastes like butterscotch.

Each beer and wine were opened and poured for each person to taste. The wine bringers got wine, and the beer bringers got beer. Lizz had fun playing sommelier

That was Fünf Riesling, which was one of my favorites, but alas, I didn’t get to bring it home… but I’ll get to that in a minute. Skylar was on hand doing her job being cute and eating Almond Roca

Soon, a few people needed to start leaving, and the executive decision was made by Lizz’s mom that we needed to light birthday candles ASAP. This amazing cake is called the Queen Elizabeth cake, and it featured ladyfingers, pound cake, strawberries, bananas, and buttercream icing from Deerfield’s Bakery:

The candles were lit

And huge slices were enjoyed by all. It was literally impossible to have a small piece, so I’m blaming the sugar for making me not take a picture of the sliced cake… once we all had a nice sugar and wine buzz, Lizz started drawing names from her basket of wine labels. My name was drawn next-to-last, which meant I had only two options of wine left to choose: the one I brought or a red that I didn’t like. Lucky me got to bring home a bottle of wine I KNEW I liked! There was a no tradeback rule (well, an unspoken one) so I was “stuck” with it!

I’m most definitely having a party like this sometime soon… it was a lot of fun trying wines that I’d never think to try, and it gave a common thread of conversation for people who didn’t know each other that well.

So Happy Birthday Lizz!! I’m thankful every day that you are my heterosexual life mate, and love you dearly!!

A little blog news:

* Make sure you check out the Cute Food Cutiversary Contest and vote for your favorite reader-submitted cute food using the poll on the right. Comment votes won’t count!

* I’ll be working to organize my recipes in the coming week. Expect to see more links in the Recipes tab!

* Fun stuff from my OpenSky Shop is coming on Tuesday!

I have a great chili recipe coming tomorrow, as well as my first foray into Indian cooking on Wednesday! Also, a HUGE thank you goes out to Ashley from Edible Perspective and Alice from Eat A Duck I Must for the heads up about the amazing photo-editing program that is Lightroom. I’m obsessed… as if I needed something else to occupy my time on the computer!

Have a great Monday!

Tagged as: birthday, cheese, dessert, Drinks, friends, fun, poll, wine