Test Driving some of the Wedding Gifts

Over the weekend Chris and I got adventurous and tried out some of the wedding gifts that we haven’t gotten a chance to use yet. Now, if you are thinking how could they possibly not used all the wedding gifts after 1 ½ years being married, what’s up? We decided that we wouldn’t use any of the wedding gifts until Chris came home from Iraq so everything would be new for both of us when we moved in together…well that took 15 months to happen so in the last three months we’ve been happily using most of the gifts.

On Saturday night we had some friends over to use to deep fryer and the ice cream maker. The weather was beautiful here so we “borrowed” a picnic table from another part of the apartment complex so we could relax outside. Luckily, we had a friend who was able to help Chris carry it over here because that thing was too heavy for me! Chris’ uncle John sent chicken wings from his bar down when Chris came home, thanks John! We wanted to share them with friends so we fried them up along with French fries, cheese sticks, onion rings and cauliflower. Chris was in charge of manning the deep fryer and he did a great job! He tossed the wings in three different sauces (traditional hot sauce, mustard and teriyaki) after cooking them and they turned out great. I believe the mustard sauce was the crowd favorite but I stuck with the traditional because I don’t like mustard.

We also decided to get out the ice cream maker that attaches to my KitchenAid Mixer. To make ice cream, we put a special mixing bowl into the freezer for 15 hours and then made the ice cream mixture (and cooked it, no raw eggs here). We put the mixture in the ice cream maker for about 30 minutes and it came out great! We did a traditional vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberry topping. Everyone enjoyed the food and we enjoyed having friends over for great fun and conversation.

On Monday we broke out another wedding gift, the crockpot. Chris decided that he wanted a roast so I put it in the crockpot with some onions, garlic, celery and carrots Monday before work and let it cook until I got home at 5:30. The roast was plenty done and a little bit dry so I made gravy for it and the mashed potatoes. It was nice to have relatively little to do to prepare dinner instead of working on everything when I get home and I think Chris enjoyed it.