Birthday parties = tons of food

We had a few friends over to celebrate the husband's birthday this past weekend. I happened to be in need of a little cooking therapy so I took the opportunity to both bake and cook up a storm. I managed to only take pictures of the cake (which was a teensy bit lopsided).

Here's the menu - I went with a comfort food theme.

And now for the run down of the food.

Appetizers

All of the appetizers are things we've made a number of times and all well worth the minimal prep time. The pimento cheese (from Frank Stitt's Southern Table) is especially tasty! You can find a copy of the recipe here.

Main Dishes

As for the main dishes, the Buffalo meatloaf, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, and greens, were made from Bon Appetite recipes and the traditional meatloaf from a Gourmet recipe, which can all be found on the epicurious site (best site ever). I altered all of them a bit, using some of the comments on epicurious and some personal preferences as the basis for the changes.

Everything turned out pretty well as far as the main dishes went. I would HIGHLY recommend the mac and cheese - so tasty.  The mashed potato recipe was a dud - totally not worth the time it took, but the homemade ranch was tasty. And the greens were super yummy but pretty time consuming. The meatloafs were terrific and I love that the buffalo meatloaf is leaner but still quite tasty. I might add that all of these foods make fantastic leftovers.

Cake!

The dessert was most definitely different but quite tasty. I completely forgot to include almonds in the layers and some of the bites are a bit salty b/c of the sea salt but overall a very tasty unique cake. Would totally make it again.