May 7th - Sweet Potato night & May 8th - Sean and Shruti's Graduation Party

I completely forgot to take pictures tonight, and it was an important night! Alas. We had first-time guests, Lindsay Brubaker and Matt Robinson, and our very first Cafe Davis anniversary dinner. Peter and Christy Norment decided, out of all of Harrisonburg's romantic offerings, to spend their 5th wedding anniversary with us! I hope it was all they wanted it to be!

The dinner ingredient of the night was sweet potatoes. The menu included sweet potato sausage balls; yellow and green bean salad with olives, cherry tomatoes, and summer savory; sweet potato ravioli with brown butter; and homemade bread. Or, that was the plan. In reality we only had green bean salad - there was no yellow to it - because I couldn't find yellow beans anywhere. I also forgot to put the olives in the salad, mostly because the ones I had in the refrigerator spilled, and then I forgot to look in the pantry to see if I had more (which I'm pretty sure I did). We also did not have homemade bread. Mike is the baker in the house, and I completely forgot to tell him that his skills were needed for the evening until late in the afternoon when he was already engrossed in yard work and Sean and Shruti's graduation party preparations.

On the whole, I thought dinner was fine, but I wasn't a big fan of the "ravioli" made with won ton wrappers. The filling was really tasty, but the won ton wrappers are just the wrong consistency for me to truly believe them as ravioli. I *could*, I suppose, make my own pasta, but that seems like a lot of work. Maybe it's something I can work on in the Cafe Davis "off-season." The best part of the meal, in my opinion, were the sweet potato sausage balls. They reminded me of something that I used to eat as a kid (maybe at my grandmother's house? or at covered dish suppers in the church Fellowship Hall?) I can't really place the taste memory, but they are delicious and worth revisiting if you too vaguely recollect some kind of cheesy pork biscuit tasting thing from your youth. Plus, they're easy to make (bonus!). I'll definitely be adding these to the Christmas party line-up this year, even if that does make a lot of my favorite appetizers pretty pork-heavy.

Sweet Potato Sausage Balls
(from About.com)

Ingredients

3 cups biscuit mix
1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
2 cups mashed sweet potatoes*
1 pound hot sausage, uncooked
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup chopped pecans

Preparation
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking pan with foil and lightly grease or spray with nonstick cooking spray.

Combine biscuit mix, cheese, mashed sweet potatoes, sausage, and salt until well blended, using hands. Add chopped pecans. Wet hands with cool water and shape the mixture into 1-inch balls; place on the prepared baking pan. Moisten hands from time to time as needed to prevent sticking. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until lightly browned on tops and deeper brown on bottoms.

* To make mashed sweet potatoes, microwave two large sweet potatoes in high for 6 minutes. Turn potatoes over and microwave for 6 additional minutes. Remove and let cool. Peel by cutting off the skins, and mash in a medium bowl.

Mustard Dipping Sauce
Mix together 1 cup mayonnaise, 2-3 teaspoons ground mustard (Dijon or other preferred flavor) and 1/4 tsp fresh dillweed.

So, that's the scoop on Cafe Davis for the evening. Now on to what I tried to do next.... After all of the guests left, Mike prepped the hamburger patties for Sean and Shruti's graduation party, and made some tasty pasta salad. I got to work making what was supposed to be an awesome cake. The intended cake was a jelly roll style cake - the plan was to only roll it partially, frost it with white cream cheese frosting, pipe decorative swirls on the side and "Class of 2010" on the unrolled part, and then tie a bow on the "diploma scroll" with a fruit roll-up. The picture of the finished cake I found on the internet was adorable. I mixed up the delicious cake batter, made the cake, rolled it out in a cocoa-dusted towel, and was about to start on the frosting when I decided to unroll the cake and add the creme between the rolled layers. That's when it all fell apart... literally. First a small tear, then a gaping hole. Apparently, size does matter, and my jelly roll pan was significantly larger than what the recipe required. The result was a too-thin cake that wouldn't hold its shape. Oh well. By the time I created my delicious pile of disappointment, it was pushing 1am and I decided to just go to bed. The following are all pictures of the graduation soiree, and even though the festivities were graced with a 1/4 sheet cake from Food Lion, I think everyone still had a good time.

Graduate (and roommate) Sean Lowry: