a meal fit for a queen

...and by queen i mean queens..and by queens i mean my lovely girlfriends!

last weekend 8 of us ladies went to one of my best friend's cabin for her birthday. we decided we ought to have a really nice meal before getting completely intoxicated later on in the night!

I was asked to make my pasta...which is somewhat of a secret recipe. I came up with it all by myself, no recipes to follow! It's a HUGE hit, especially with the vegetarians! It's light but paaaaaacked with flavor. It's not the cheapest dish to make, especially not this weekend because I doubled the recipe. Well worth it, though. I also had two of my girls help me make each and every lil pasta..i dont know what to call em...tortellini? ravioli? I'll have to look up the difference. We ended up with 3 cookie sheet trays full of goodness. I'm salivating just thinking about it. It's main ingredients are spinach and cheese and that's all I'll say. Accompanying the pasta we had garlic bread and greek salad (birthday girl's fav). For dessert I whipped up a chocolate sheet cake. It makes a GIGANTIC cake. I had never made it before and it was so easy that I was able to get it done in maaaaaaaybe an hour - start to finish! I used the Pioneer Woman Cooks recipe. Turned out perfect. I had to transport it from the city so I actually ended up cutting the sheet into layers and layering in the ooey gooey chocolate/walnut icing..and as always, i cut down the sugar the recipe calls for.


One of the girls brought some mini cupcakes from The Cupcakery in Winnipeg. They were cute but I wasn't blown away by them. I think the cake could have been a bit more moist? If I had to BUY cupcakes, I'd have to say Whole Foods actually makes em pretty good. Avoid the Cupcake Shoppe in Raleigh at all costs. Yuck. I'd always rather make my own anyway.