Party Like a Cheesemonger

As I mentioned in the last post, we've been wanting to have a get-together in our new apartment for a while. Well on Saturday night it finally happened. Naturally, it involved a lot of planning, a day's worth of cooking, cleaning, and setup, and Jen coming pretty close to a nervous breakdown. I may have been sternly told that knowing which wine pairs with ricotta cheese is "common sense!" (Jen's edit:  I'd like to point out that I did NOT tell Matt that knowing which cheese to pair with ricotta is common sense.  What I said was common sense is knowing that ricotta should be in a bowl vs. on a plate.)

I tried to be helpful. I made time in my busy schedule as ambiance specialist (setting up tables, lighting candles, and creating the music playlist) to go get Jen another ball of pizza dough when her first wouldn't rise and got hard in the oven. Jen had quite the menu planned for the night which included caramelized onion pizza, stuffed mushrooms, brie en croute, hummus, baba ganoush, olives, fruit, wine and cheese and a pumpkin trifle.

We had everything done by about 6:30, with the party starting at 7. We looked around at everything cleaned, arranged, lit, baked, chilled, and ready for guests and just started laughing. "What if no one shows!?" Luckily plenty of people showed up. Considering the size of our apartment, if everyone we invited actually came it would be too crowded. Just the right amount and mix of people from all parts of our life in NYC made the trek from the Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, New Jersey, and even Pennsylvania to attend.  And almost everyone who came brought us a bottle of wine.  This plus the wine we purchased for the party will keep us set for at least a week or so...

Everyone was very complimentary of our apartment.  We were even told that it is "very grown up."  Jen got lots of compliments on her spread and one guest asked if she was available for hire. I think the highlight of the party was our wine & cheese tasting table (pic below).  And, of course, everyone loved Pup who was very well behaved.

Our friends from PA stayed the night and we hung out with them on Sunday.  We took them to our church then spent the afternoon in Manhattan and had an amazing lunch at Eataly. By the end of the day, we were pooped.  Good thing we both had today off to sleep in.  Well, Jen did anyway...and I called in a personal day.

Below are some pics from Saturday night.