All posts tagged dessert

Wine and Cheese Party

Last night was the much-anticipated Wine and Cheese Birthday Party! While I spent quite a bit of time off to the side by myself (I was feeling a little under the weather and I still don’t speak enough French to understand all the conversation!), I still had a great time.

I made a fruit salad all by myself…I know this isn’t hard and all I did was cut up the fruit, but for me it is a step in the right culinary direction! And on Friday I helped Adeline make an olive cake, but I didn’t have any because I don’t like olives >_<. Before I put him to bed, I took a lot of time taking care of Sylvain. Greg thanked me because that left him and Adeline free to socialize (he explained to me earlier that they don’t get to see all of their friends regularly because they all live an hour away) and I was happy to do it. It’s really nice when you get time with your friends who you haven’t seen in a while. Everyone was really nice and I met the couple who we are going to the sea with in June.

On to the cheese! There was so much! And I actually have no idea what they were all called and I didn’t try all of them, but I tried about, hmmm, 5 or 6 different flavours. One thing to say about Belgian cheese is that it is a lot stronger than our cheese at home (or at least the cheese I’m used to eating). It tastes so real, less chemicals. I know for sure that I do not like goat cheese. I’ve tried it 3 times now and I don’t like it. It’s like when I gave foie gras a second chance – nope – don’t like it at all. The other cheeses were good, but I think it’s going to take a little time for me to get used to them and to really like them. They’re a lot stronger than I’m used to. We also had a cheese pie which smelled like feet but tasted really good! That’s another thing about real cheese…some of it smells nasty, but you have to ignore that and just eat it! We also had fresh bread from the boulangerie (bakery) down the street and grapes. You can’t have a wine and cheese party without grapes! I didn’t actually have that much wine. I’m not really a fan, but I will try it some times. Also, when I do drink it I prefer White, but Greg says that with cheese you drink Red. I also had a little bubbles to drink (remember, it’s not champagne if it doesn’t come from Champagne France!).

For me, the best part of the night was the dessert! From the bakery we got two fruit pies (cherry and apple with almonds) and two mousse cakes (chocolate and speculoos –> a typical Belgian cinnamon cookie).

Chocolate:

Speculoos:

And then we got to blow out the candles! Ready Greg?

1 – 2 – 3!

MAKE A WISH!

2 Comments

by hollyjb on January 16, 2011 • Permalink

Posted in Holidays and Family

Tagged apple, bakery, bread, bubbles, candles, cheese, cherry, chocolate, cinnamon, dessert, feet, foie gras, fruit pies, fruit salad, goat cheese, grapes, mousse cake, olive cake, party, smell, speculoos, wine

Posted by hollyjb on January 16, 2011

https://hollyjb.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/wine-and-cheese-party/

…

Cough, cough, go away. Don’t come back any other day.

So, day two of the evil cough is almost over. I think if I play my cards right the cough will be almost over too. It’s much better than yesterday.

Hope you all had a great weekend, I did!

Ooooh! I got to try some yummy desserts today. They were very tasty. Thought you’d want to know ;).

Also, French class starts tomorrow…I’m excited, but nervous at the same time. Hope it goes well!

Bonne annee!

Ok. So I almost dropped the ball here. I’ve got 31 minutes before I miss a day of blogging. Although if I go by Toronto time I still have 6.5 hours! The following is an outtake from last night. I wrote it down on paper before going to bed….I guess it was very early this morning. Here we go:

What a night! We had so much food (some I liked, some I didn’t) and the dessert! Delicious chocolate truffles and more. It is now 2:42am January 1, 2011. Which means it’s not even 9pm for you guys in Ontario and in Vancouver it’s not even 6! (I still can’t get over this time change thing….) I’m spending the night @ Jean-Go’s, and we cleaned up most of the party stuff. There will be a menu for this evening coming, and I got pictures of some of the desserts, but I didn’t think of doing that for everything else. The things we had tonight are not common here, most of it is for special occasions only. I had a great time trying new food and I’ve discovered that I like duck…at least the way it was done tonight. That’s all for now, I need sleep. One more thing; Jean is going to help teach me how to cook. He’s invited me over to learn. It sounds like fun and I’m hoping that I can learn to enjoy taking the time to make things. Bonne nuit!

So that only really touched the surface, but the most important thing to take away from this is that even though I didn’t know what they were talking about unless Jean translated for me, I still had a great time.

Also, we had this drink that was like champagne, but was not champagne because it did not come from Champagne, France. It was made by Jean’s uncle, and had Bubbles for Him and Bubbles for Her. Very exciting.

I leave you now with some eye candy ^_^: