Saying goodbye

Yesterday was Susan & Todd's goodbye party before departing for Papua New Guinea. It was a late afternoon, potluck shindig at the gymnasium at First Baptist. The most important part of the evening was making sure that everyone got their photo taken so that Susan could put together a photo book to take with them to help remind the boys (and themselves) who everybody is.

Now that they're fully funded they're just waiting to get their visas back from the PNG embassy in Washington DC which is pending a fax approval from the PNG government. Then they can purchase their plane tickets ($1500-1700 each!) and head on out for their four-year adventure in the jungle. Susan and I will be sure to see each other one last time before she leaves.

Since the going-away party was a potluck, I got started on a salad as soon as I got home from church yesterday. I decided on a mango quinoa salad.

The salad ingredients were cooked quinoa, red bell pepper, mango, avocado, cilantro, green onions, and a can of drained black beans.

The dressing was a mix of meyer lemon olive oil, raspberry basil vinegar, lime juice and salt and pepper. The olive oil and vinegar could just be plain, but I used my fancy stuff 'cause I'm cool like that.

After sitting in the fridge for about two hours the dressing had permeated everything and produced an absolutely delicious (gluten free) salad. And based on my empty bowl at the end of the event it looked like other people like it too.

Since I was already in the kitchen making a mess with the salad I also made some Thai Chicken Biscuit Cups form one of my favorite online food blogs to take with me so that I would have something substantial to eat. The recipe is basically a (gluten free) bisquick muffin mix baked around a curry chicken cheese filling.

I just made a half recipe of 6 muffins (2 per serving). It was about a TBSP of muffin batter topped with a 1/4 cup of chicken filling, and covered with about another TBSP of batter.

After 5 minutes in the oven I pulled out the tray and added chopped cashews (didn't have any peanuts) and green onions over each of the muffins and then put them back in the oven for another 15 minutes.

I had intended for the Canadian to have some for dinner while I was gone, but he'd made a big vat of crockpot chili on Saturday that he was still working on so only I've eaten them so far. I doubled the curry in them so that they'd be a little bit spicier and I think that they came out perfect. And they're so easy to pack for lunches - love it. Yay for double success in the kitchen!