What I Did...

I asked you yesterday what you thought I was doing. I asked you to complete the sentence: It seems when I'm not traveling or running I'm _____________________.
A few of you guessed.

Nope. You guessed wrong.

The right answer is "entertaining."

Luckily, my house was basically put back in order after coming home from our LOONNGGG vacation. That was only because I didn't turn the computer on until I put everything away, sorted all of our laundry and gotten much of it under control.

Excuse me while I pat myself on the back. Hopefully I won't pull a muscle doing so.

ANYWAY...

Our dear friends Gary and Amy and their kids came to visit yesterday. You remember them! They are our dear friends that usually take our trips with us. They went to Glacier with us last year. Their kids are in most of our vacation photos. But, alas, they did not go to Yellowstone with us this year! *sob* They were taking a family vacation and taking a train out of the Twin Cities, so they stopped by our house for dinner and to visit. (You will no doubt see some more photos of them soon, as we are going on a camping trip with them in a few more weeks! Yeah! And, next year we're going to coordinate our big family vacations together again and we'll be going to Acadia Park in Maine together! I cannot wait! Our families travel and vacation VERY WELL together!)
They live about 200 miles away from us, and we don't get to see them often, but when we do, it's an easy, comfortable friendship. The Twin Cities are a hop, skip and a jump from us - so I was glad that they were taking the train from the Cities because they couldn't be that close and not plan a trip to see us!

I love entertaining! We do quite a bit of it. I love coming up with creative menus and making our table look beautiful for guests. It is only mildly unnerving that my good friend Amy is a caterer and teaches gourmet cooking classes and I'm REALLY AN AMATEUR COOK!!!
I wanted to serve something really special. One, because they are truly two of our best friends and we go WAAAYYY back! And, two - the whole culinary thing...they are foodies, for sure! So, I made a few sure bets...we had my corn casserole that has creamed corn, whole kernel corn and corn bread mix in it (always a hit) and homemade mac n' cheese with Ritz cracker crumbs on top (for the kiddos...although the adults hit it pretty hard...), homemade applesauce (courtesy of the crock pot) - but for the main dish I attempted *drum roll, please* CIDER BRINED PORK CHOPS WITH GRILLED APPLES!

I had never made this recipe before. I know, I know...you should never try out a new recipe on company...but, these were our special friends...and they've HAD all my other meals before. (After all, I only cook about 4 or 5 things really WELL...and they've eaten those dishes over about 500 times...they've probably had each of those things 100 times each!) Besides, we just got this cool grill...and Mike said he'd do the grilling part. I could blame him if they didn't taste good! Whew!

All went well, except the recipe was for 4 servings. I needed to make 12 chops. I'd just triple it - right??? The brine was made up of spices, apple cider and 1/2 cup kosher salt. (That's A LOT of salt!) Instead of making a separate brine for 4 chops, I tripled the recipe (1 1/2 cups salt???) and poured an estimated 1/2 of the recipe in a plastic bag with 6 chops and then repeated with the remainder. (Well, if you ever do something like that, don't assume that you'd have to triple the salt. Ewwww...) I put the chops in a plastic Ziploc with the brine, as instructed, and flipped the bag every half hour for 2 hours. Then, rinsed the chops and discarded the brine. Then, I slathered on this yummy glaze made from melted butter, apple brandy and melted apple jelly! The chops were grilled, along with Granny Smith apples that were glazed and grilled.

The apples were SO GOOD - and the chops were....salty! Everyone else said they were good...except Ellie, Amy & Gary's daughter. She said they were good, but tasted like  breakfast sausage...which, they kind of did - because they were so darn SALTY!

I have dinner guests coming over again Monday. I may attempt this one again - but I will use only a teensy weensy bit of the salt!

Do you like to try new dishes out when you entertain, or do you stick with tried and true recipes? What kind of things do you like to serve? How do you make things special for your favorite people?

I'm celebrating my oldest sister's birthday on Monday. I haven't seen her for a LONG time! (Has it been since Christmas?) I love her to DEATH! She's super sweet. I want to make her and her hubby and daughter something special for dinner & dessert. Any ideas on food, table settings, decorations, gifts (she's 53)? I'd love input!