My Chez Gourmet B-day Party

My mom only throws "friend" birthday parties every other year.  On opposite years, it's just extended family parties.  This was the year for a friend party.   I decided on a cooking night with a French cuisine inspired menu. 

This is the invite my mom created.

As the guests arrived, they received a new apron to wear and a recipe book of all the food we would be eating that night.  We all worked together and made a yummy dinner, then ate it. It was a lot of fun. We got to try lots of new foods including radish sandwiches and ratatouille.

Radish Sandwiches

My mom made French Onion Soup and many of the girls who had either never tried it or didn't usually like that kind of soup, LOVED it.  They said it was the best!  It's now one of my favorites, too.  My mom also made a yummy sauce to go over the chicken cordon bleu that the girls and I helped to prepare just before.   We had extra so my mom served it to dip our bread into it like a cheese fondue.  It was soooo good.  My mom forgot to make the couscous.  Oops!  It was supposed to be served with the ratatouille.  We at all of our food on my mom's fancy china!!  We felt like we were in an upscale restaurant for a special occasion.

Chicken Cordon Bleu with Ratatouille and grapes

One of my favorite parts of the party was watching a cooking demonstration (lead by my aunt Holly) of our dessert...Peach Blueberry Galettes.  The crust started out as crumbs and if you push it together it would goes into dough. I thought that was really cool. After she showed us how to make the crust, we all helped to put the galettes together.  We rolled out the crust, layered the fruit on top, and rolled the edges of the crust over the outside edge of the fruit layer, creating an open faced pie.  We brushed the crust with an egg wash and sprinkled cinnamon/sugar all over the top of the galette.  Into the oven they went so that they could bake while we ate our dinner.

The Banquet Table

Finished Galettes...YUM!!

It was a very fun night full of good food!  I can't wait to eat food from this menu again and some of the girls said they were excited to go home and make the recipes with their families.  (All the girls got to take home their aprons and recipe booklets.)

Happy Birthday to me!!

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