ArcaMax

Dinner for Ten...

We did dinner for 10 over the weekend. I do love to entertain. And my husband was a huge help. Haven't had a chance to have people over for awhile. I have been so busy building The Zola Diet that I've been working pretty solidly seven days a week.

I had committed to this dinner party about two months ago. We have new neighbors and it was time to introduce them to some of the other neighbors. You know how it goes in the winter. Everyone leaves the house, gets in the car and drives away. No one sees anyone, so Chrissy and Ben had not met most of the neighbors. Even if you have a dog, during the winter you bundle up and go out for your dog to do "the business" and oftentimes you run back in so you don't really run into people like you would in the winter.

I had the same experience in the Fall when we moved in. I met a few folks while it was October and it was still fairly nice but then we all went underground til the next Spring, so I was happy to try to speed up the "meet and greet" process for Chrissy and Ben.

The neighbors were cooperative too. Everyone was up for a dinner party. I kept it to just 10 so I could fit it in with everything else and we could all sit at one table.

No one had to travel far (just a few houses away at most) so I set up a wine bar for cocktail hour. I specialized in Spanish and Australian wines. Everyone could just dip into whatever bottles they wanted. That was a breeze.

Dinner was easy. I did a couple of antipasti trays. Many of the recipes are on the Zola recipe site. Just check under appetizers for the exotic mushrooms in balsamic vinegar, and peppers with zip. Then cut up some cheese and place salamis on the plate and you're set to go.

The entrée was a recipe I have given you already. We did the Chicken and Sausage Etouffe. I served it in big pasta blows with a layer of fresh shredded spinach underneath. The warm entrée served on top of the spinach immediately wilted the greens. I thought this was much healthier than rice or pasta underneath. Everyone got more vitamins that way too. The recipe falls under the reduction phase of The Zola Diet so even though their bowl was full of flavor they were eating diet food. The recipe is fairly tame so I set out Louisiana hot sauces and they could zip it up as hot as they wanted.

I didn't say anything about it being diet food to the group. One woman in attendance is on The Zola Diet and I knew she was in the reduction phase so I wanted to make sure she would get an entre she could eat. I just told her so she'd know she was good to go.

The funny part was how quietly the buzz went through the whole table that they were eating "diet food". ( I heard about this all in the kitchen after dinner was served.) I heard that one wife looked at her husband and said, "Do you like this?". He said "Sure, what's not to like!" and he proceeded to clean his plate. She then broke the news to him that he was eating "diet food". Jokes were made about how to he wanted to dip his face into the bowl and lick the remaining sauce.

Another woman, (I heard) talked to her husband about how if they could eat like this, then maybe she'd really be successful on a diet. You can imagine how good this all made me feel.

I keep telling people how my goal is to develop the best tasting diet on the planet. I guess it's coming true.

Mini Meatloaves

Another goal I have in developing The Zola Diet is to make it kid friendly. It's a real pain for someone who's on a diet to have to make a separate meal for the kids or the spouse. Most tell me that their kids love the food. The spouse does too. Here's a recipe for mini-meatloaves that are part of The Zola Diet.

I've come up with a new Zola category. Zola To-GO! These are meals that can be eaten at home right when you make them, or they can be taken to work for lunch, or a picnic in the park. I hope you enjoy them!

Servings:

Makes 4 small loaves, can be doubled.

Ingredients:

1 lb of lean ground beef. I use ground sirloin

4 large breadsticks (grissini is the Italian name)

1 tsp of Worchestershire sauce (organic)

4 Tbl of chopped Vidalia onion

2 cloves of minced garlic (in this case jar garlic is fine)

Cayenne to taste. A good sprinkle will do it. This is optional

4 tsp of tomato paste (get the Hunts sugarless kind -- the ingredients will say tomatoes and water -- or any other sugar free tomato paste. Look closely at the labels).

Instructions:

Crush your breadsticks to a fine crumb texture. You can do this in a food processor or even in a plastic bag and crush it with your rolling pin.

Add the crumbs to a large bowl. Now, add the meat, onion and spices. Keep the tomato paste aside. Mix the ingredients so they are all distributed evenly.

Take out your regular-sized muffin tin. Spray four segments (apart from each other). Make four "balls" of meatloaf out of your mixture. Put them in your muffin tin. Squish them down a bit so they have a flat-ish top on them. Spread one tsp of tomato paste on the top of each. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

Serving Suggestions:

Let cool slightly before trying to remove them from the pan. I use a fork to "grab" them from the side. Gently remove them and plate them along with your side dish. Makes a great dinner or even a lunch. You can put these, when cool, in baggies and store in the refrigerator. They travel well to work and you can eat them cold (my sister loves cold meatloaf) or you can heat them in the microwave.

Cheers
Enjoy,
Zola

Send email to Zola at zolacooks@gmail.com.