Mixmaster Monday

Welcome back to Mixmaster Monday!!

I have to be at work at 6 a.m. tomorrow, so every minute spent here writing is a minute of sleep that's lost. BUT... I could not go to bed without posting about my wine & cheese party this past Saturday night.

I wanted to post a photo from the party. It is the same party that I wrote about last week. Five of us congregated at my house for a Girl's Night In / Wine & Cheese / Movie Night.

We watched "French Kiss" starring Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline. It's so funny!!! Then we watched "Love, Actually", which is also very good. I like both these movies a lot. So, with all the munchies, and wines from five different countries, and the movies, it was a good night! The last of the stragglers left at 2 a.m. *yawn*

Here is the photo...

What's not to love?!?! Starting from the small red bowl in the top left corner and going clockwise:

 - Mango chutney

 - Clementines

 - Stack of plates

 - Chocolate caramel biscuits in the dark brown bowl

 - Small cream cheeses with dried peppers on top (beige fluted plate)

 - One cheese platter, containing Canadian White Cheddar, Brie, Herbed Goat's Milk Cheese, Dutch Blue Cheese and Smoked Gouda and a sprinkling of red and green grapes

 - Pepperoni sticks

 - Heather's Cheese Ball, Jalapeno Cheese and Cheddar Cheese on the blue plate

 - Another cheese platter, containing Canadian White Cheddar, Camembert, Herbed Goat's Milk Cheese, Dutch Blue Cheese and Spices & Herbs Havarti and a sprinkling of red and green grapes

 - In the middle, a plate of two types of crackers, and a cutting board with a loaf of white French bread and a loaf of multigrain French bread.

It was a feast fit for five princesses. (Who needs to be queen? Too much work...)

Anyway, each guest was asked to bring a wine from a different country. We had wines from Germany, Australia, South Africa, USA and France. Gotta say, the French wines, both white and red, were awful. I hope they were just bad choices, and are not representative of typical French wines. The others were all really nice.

Unless my friends and rellies were all lying their hearts out, it was a really nice night, and the wine & cheese went over really well. So, if you ever want to have a wine & cheese party, just use the list above as suggestions.

The breads were really, really good. I highly recommend them. It was good to have the clementines and biscuits, they just added a change from the cheese. The chutney worked really well with the white cheddar, too. Like I said last week, Ricardo from "Ricardo & Friends" on the Food Network said that jams with cheeses are the latest 'thing', and the chutney underlined that point. Now, if only we could have found some Branston Pickles...

Keep in mind, this is not a meal. People should not come expecting to dine, but to enjoy the wine & cheese as a social experience.

All in all, it was a really nice night, with good friends and family, and a delicious spread. And best of all, it was an easy-easy-easy night to prepare for, yet for all that ease it looked amazing when it was all ready to go.

I'll definitely be doing this again!

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