31 Days of Halloween- the gathering of Witches

A few days after the playgroup party was my turn to host our culinary group with my friend Candice. The theme was a witches gathering. We had a bubbling cauldron of cheese fondue and bat wings and guano (blue tortilla chips and guacamole) for hors d'œuvres . That was followed by butternut squash spider soup and wilted greens with pumpkin remains (pepitas). The main course was an anti-vampire stake (skirt steak) with garlic chimichurri sauce (I made poor Br cook this for me. He did a fantastic job and I rewarded him by sticking him in the back room during the dinner with the kids), shrunken potatoes, and eye of newt (quinoa-Thanks Pfister for the idea) with poison mushrooms. We washed it down with bibbidy bubbly boo potion for everlasting beauty (orange soda with a fun label on the bottle -- a spin off of this). Our sweet ending was sweet potato cheese cake, poison caramel and chocolate dipped apples and ghost pears. And on the way out everyone got to trick or treat from our assortment of orange colored candies.

Oh and here is my favorite tip I picked up in all my internet perusing for this party. Make paper plates look fancier by taking two colors that look good together. Cut around the edge of one of them with the scrapbooking scissors (i don't know the real name) that make a pattern and glue that plate on top of another plate of the other color. It was nice to have cheap (from the $1 store) but fancy looking plates that I didn't have to wash at the end of the night). I had such a good time but I was kidding myself with weight loss goals this month. (More pictures of this later too).