leon - day 2, plus we were cooking!

so today (saturday), leon and i took a skytrain ride to gm place to pick up the fright night tickets through the vancouver canucks. he was a very good boy on the train :-) after we came home, i loaded him into the car and we had a few more errands to run. leon's a very docile labrador retriever - he doesn't get fazed by anything, he doesn't bite very hard, and he loves to chill.

today i was having 6 people over for dinner....that would be the maximum number i could have at one time, since i only have table settings for 8 ppl :P (my mom has since asked me if i want more dishes - perhaps to seat 10 or 12 ppl - but then i'd need a bigger table, so i passed on her offer.) tara and anna showed up mid-afternoon, and then we met sandra and ang at save-on-foods. we had a few groceries to pick-up for our chicken pot pie accompanied by a green salad, and our chocolate mousse. we caused some excitement at save-on since we had a puppy w/us! i've gotten used to the staring, the whispering "oooh, puppy-in-training", the ppl running forward to pet the puppy, the ppl sidestepping away in uncertainty, and all the questions ppl have.

then we were down to business....once i had taken care of leon, i put him into his kennel for some quiet time so i could actually do some of the work in the kitchen. the chicken pot pie was pretty straight forward.....a bunch of veggies and some chicken.....it was a bit tedious because of the chicken stock.....boil it here, strain it there, save it here, etc. etc. but with 5 girls, the entire prpearation was surprisingly quick. we were multi-tasking today - ang was working on the chocolate mousse.....my only contribution to the dessert was mixing the sugar and chocolate together.....it appeared to be on a downhill spiral, so ang and sandra muddled through it. anna, tara and i focussed our attention on our veggies boiling in the chicken stock, only to discover that some of it had burned at the bottom of the pot. oh well!

once the chicken and veggies were combined, all that was left was the top crust. we went biscuit-style....and to quote tara "it tastes like a scone.....with chicken." (or something to that effect!) i had to agree with her....it was very biscuit-like - i'm not sure why it didn't really dawn on me when we first talked about it either. i would rather have the pastry topping. anyways, the directions for the topping were confusing....i didn't understand why i would knead dough with knives. sandra explained to me what it meant, and everyone has their own preference - anna likes to use the knives and sandra prefers her hands....i was with sandra on this....i think it's more efficient, plus i'm washable! i'm not sure if i've ever kneaded dough before (i might have been 5 the last time i did it), so sandra took the helm, and kneaded away using my plastic cups. (side note to sandra.....add a rolling pin to our shopping list!)

ryan and mike showed up for dinner, and even chris managed to sit down with us all, too. our meal was complemented by a white wine (2005 hardy's riesling gewurtztraminer - a.k.a. our wedding wine) and a red wine that mike brought (2002 cedar creek platinum reserve merlot). since i love sweet wines, i polished off my glass of wedding wine :-) yum-yum!

the chicken pot pies were really yummy, and chris and i managed to take leftovers for lunch today. the mousse was really good as well. i had originally thought it was going to be like a whipped light mousse, but it was a heavier one - still very yummy with the chocolate shavings on top!

today, we used these never-before-used items....
8 martini glasses
8 denby smokestone placemats
plus we even used our DISHWASHER! i think this could be the 3rd time.

good food, good company.....a great night :-)