Shabbat dinner and surgery party

If you make spaetzle, here are some hints:

-Your batter can't be runny, otherwise you will end up with a bizarre doughy goo floating around in your water.

-If the recipe says to boil the water, just simmer it. You don't want your spaetlze falling apart on you!

-The final step of sauteeing the spaetzle in butter might be a little easier with a nonstick pan.

But once you figure all that out, you're golden. My spaetlze, with help from Shauna and Jeff, was delicious after much trial and error. Two sauces: gruyere, leek and roasted chicken (sauce one) and bleu cheese and leek for the vegetarians (sauce two). I'm sure I'll be making this stuff again.

I also made a Quiche Lorraine for my friend Jeri. That one got gobbled up very, very quickly. I made an "easy" puff pastry (this involved grating frozen butter- thank God for food processors) and kneading the dough, plus refrigerating it multiple times and doing a rolling/folding into thirds procedure. That was the most difficult part of the quiche- and it was honestly quite easy. This, too, I shall make again.

Mariah made a delicious concoction of cod (i.e. not cod at all, since cod is endangered), orange slices, and olives. She baked the fish filets individually in foil packets- I really like that as a serving method. I hadn't gotten her enough oranges though, so I've got a little leftover fish in my fridge. The fish was gone in a snap.

Shannon and Matt arrived with cream puffs in tow- filled with whipped cream and raspberries. Delicious! They were wonderful. Once they arrived with the cream puffs, I remembered that I had crepe batter in the fridge, and so we (Jeff and I) began making crepes. We made nutella crepes with coconut, lemon juice with powdered sugar, and lime juice with powdered sugar and coconut. Yum.

I love that we had a gigantic dinner party last night and that every single thing was successful.

I'll post photos if I can find them.

P.S.- I can't find them.