Wined and Dined!

Yesterday I held an open house here at my home. It was sort of a co-open house. A lady that works at Southwest with me, also sells wine. Sheri, a customer service rep, also does wine sampling at your home or work! A great way to unwind I think! The name of the company that she does this for is WineShop at Home. I had never heard of it before. One day as we all were leaving work and driving out of our parking lot, I noticed an advertisement on the back window of her vehicle. I was very intrigued! So after asking her a few questions, we decided it would be neat to get together with our respective products and have people over! So we set the day and time....
As for my part of it, I put together an extensive menu of items that were made with the new products that Tastefully Simple offers in the new spring and summer catalog. I was wanting to give people ideas on different ways you can utilize the products without using the same ritualistic recipes. The day before I made my shopping trips to both Sam's Club and Walmart to complete my ingredients list and get the supplies I needed for serving many people. Needless to say, I spent a small fortune on all of this! Yikes!

Here is what I prepared and what product went into the respective dish:

• Beer Bread- one loaf prepared as a bread bowl with dip
• Spinach and Herb-dip for the beer bread
• Sloppy Joes-made with the Smokey Bacon Grill Sauce and Onion Onion seasoning
• Tuna and Noodle Salad-made with Meyer's Lemon Infused oil, Seasoning Salt and Onion Onion seasoning
• Chocolate Bliss Cheese Ball-prepared and served with Vanilla Wafers
• Absolutely Almond Pound Cake-prepared as normal, poured Strawberry Jello on top that went into holes of the cake, served with Cool Whip
• Sassy Skewers-made with Cubed Turkey, Cubed Monterey Jack Cheese and Strawberry chunks. Dipped into Asian Honey Mustard Dressing
• Fiesta Party Layered Dip-recipe includes the Fiesta Party dip mixed into mayo and sour cream, shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, shredded cheese and topped with Corn and Black Bean Salsa
• Pizzeria Cheese Ball Pinwheels-prepared cheese ball spread on tortillas, topped with chopped pepperoni and chopped green olives.
• Pizzeria Cheese Ball- served with crackers
• Blue Aztec Chips-used with anything!
• Various crackers, chips and pretzels
• Brewed Iced Tea and Water

Most of these dishes were made from recipes I found in the newest recipe books that are also now available from TS. I had baked 3 loaves of beer bread the day before to get a jump on completing my menu. Sunday morning I made the cake. From there, I set about making roughly 6 lbs of sloppy Joes and put it into my Smart Pot to simmer all day. The hours seemed to pass quicker than I had hoped. My friend Trisa came over a few hours early and put my skewers together while I finished preparing the layered dip. I literally had no space left on my counters due to the over-size platters that were covering them, at the mercy of hungry tasters!

Once Sheri arrived, we helped her carry her things into the house and let her set up her sampling supplies. I had several wine glasses out and on the ready! There were 6 or 7 kinds of wine that she had brought along for the taste testing. We each had our favorites in no time. Honestly, I had hoped for a better showing. But the people that came loved everything they ate and many orders were placed!