Ladies Night 2012

Ladies Night. There is something therapeutic about sharing good food, tasty drinks, and sweet desserts with your closest girl friends. It's 72% better than a massage, 89.4% better than passive aggressively updating your Facebook status, and 99.9% better than making up arbitrary percentages.

The requirements for ladies night: the ladies, good food, and a good drink.

On this particular occasion, Jordan took point and let us tear up her house. To kick the night off, Jenni brought the drink ingredients: basil and lime muddled in gin and soda. I'm not a big gin fan, but this stuff was good enough to be declared the “official” drink of ladies night. For dinner, Jordan made an original recipe crock pot soup with chicken, veggies, mini tortellini, and cheese. It paired nicely with the crusty bread Hannah brought. For dessert, yours truly made mini cheesecakes with raspberry sauce. They're super easy and nom nommy!

Mini Cheesecakes with Raspberry Sauce

(Makes about 36 mini cheesecakes and ½ c. sauce)

Ingredients:

36ish mini Nilla Wafers

2 (8oz) blocks cream cheese (softened)

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla extract

For Raspberry Sauce:

1 bag frozen unsweetened raspberries

1/3 c. sugar

1½ Tbsp. lemon juice

Special Tools:

Mini cupcake liners

Mini cupcake pans

Fine mesh sieve

Pre-heat oven to 325°

Line mini cupcake pans with mini cupcake liners.

Place 1 mini Nilla Wafer in each cup. In a medium bowl, mix cream cheese, vanilla, and sugar on medium speed until well blended. Add eggs and mix well. Spoon cream cheese mixture over wafers until each is about ¾ full. Bake 20-25 minutes or until center wiggles slightly when pan is shaken.

Remove cheesecakes from pan when cool and chill in the refrigerator.

Meanwhile, mash up frozen raspberries in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add sugar and lemon juice. Simmer for 10-15 minutes.

While still hot, carefully pour raspberry syrup through a mesh sieve into a stainless bowl. The liquid will drain immediately. Use a spatula to push as much pulp through the sieve as possible. I worked on mine for a good 20 minutes. That's just because I'm freakish and didn't want to lose ANY of that raspberry goodness! Stir juice and pulp until combined.

Pour into a squeeze bottle or cover bowl and refrigerate.

To serve: Squeeze or spoon raspberry sauce over cheesecake and prepare to be delighted!

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In my opinion, these mini desserts are best served the next day. It allows the raspberry sauce to mellow out a little and the cheesecakes to cool completely. The sauce recipe is truly limited to what kind of fruits you have. Just imagine: a mini cheesecake bar with various fruit sauces. Blueberry, strawberry, and cherry. It makes my taste buds sing just thinking about it!

Finally! Now I Can Order Something Else at Olive Garden

I'm not a huge fan of your typical chain restaurants. I'd rather go to the local Mom and Pop Shop and take my chances than go to Applebee's or Bob Evan's. Both have been boycotted. I make a few exceptions: The Cheesecake Factory and Olive Garden. How can you resist the rich, thick deliciousness of cheesecake? It's worth making The Boyfriend overpay for an ogre sized portion of a meal that I can't finish just to get to the dessert! 

Aaaaand Olive Garden. *ahhhhh* Breadsticks. Cheese. Semi-healthy salad. Cheese on the semi-healthy salad making it a less than healthy salad. What's that you say? Cheese on your cheese ravioli? Of course! Say when...

At least, that's how it would go if I were to ever order anything other than my usual. I think Olive Garden must put something in their food because I have a love affair with their Zuppa Toscana soup. And what a dream! They offer all you can eat soup, salad, and breadsticks. But it's not fair that I can only manage 2 bowls of the dreamy goodness. And that's if I go muffin-topping for the rest of the day. Even though my stomach says, "No more!" my taste buds are saying, "Why'd you stop?"

My friend and long-time twin, Jordan, made a homemade version of Zuppa Toscana, and it was fabulous. Months later, I decided to try my hand at it. And let me tell you, it tastes EXACTLY like the restaurant's. I am so thrilled that I can finally try something different on the OG menu because I know I have delicious Zuppa waiting for me in the freezer. 

Love Affair - Zuppa Toscana

Serves 8

Ingredients:

1 lb. ground Italian sausage

1½ tsp. crushed red peppers

1 large white onion, diced (I used red onion.)

4 TBSP bacon pieces (I'll omit this in the future. Too fatty!)

2 tsp. garlic puree (Garlic presses are amazing!)

10 c. water

5 cubes of chicken bouillon

1 c. heavy cream

1 lb. sliced Russet potatoes, or about 3 large potatoes (I also quartered them.)

¼ of a bunch of kale

Saute Italian sausage and crushed red pepper in a large pot. Drain excess fat and transfer to another bowl. Refrigerate while you prepare other ingredients.

In the same large pot, saute bacon (optional), onions and garlic over low-medium heat for approximately 15 minutes or until the onions are soft.

Add chicken bouillon and water to the pot and bring to boil.

Add the sliced potatoes and cook until soft, about half an hour.

Add the heavy cream, sausage, and kale. Stir until heated through. Serve.

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A piece of advice: Only add enough kale as you plan on serving. The kale loses its crunchy goodness after awhile.

When!

Original recipe here.