{26th birthday party: part two}

When Chris and I sat down to think up the menu for our birthday party, we only knew one thing for sure and that was that the main dish was definitely going to be some kind of pork.  It has become somewhat of on going joke how often Chris chooses to make pork as a main dish.  After finally deciding on a marinated pork shoulder; we added an herbed polenta cake, roasted parmesan potatoes, cheesy spinach gratin and garlic cremini mushrooms to the menu.  The we rounded it out with some herb butter garlic bread and a simple field greens salad with a balsamic vinaigrette, slivered almonds, shallots and goat cheese.  The main goal was to pick dishes that could all be prepared the night before so that we wouldn't have to be in the kitchen very much during the party.  Click on the individual names of dishes above to check out the recipes!

For the appetizers I choose to make simple one bite dishes that could be served cold and could be assembled the an hour or two before the party.  You can see the recipes for the Strawberry Pesto crostini here and the Caprese bites here.  The third appetizer was cantalope and proscuitto which is pretty self explanatory. 

The meal and entire night turned out wonderfully. I cant wait til next year!