Colorado, from a New Yorker's point of view

Last Saturday my roommate / landlord / friend Cori and I hosted our first party.   It was actually a chocolate mousse off.   My first night in town she casually mentioned that she makes the world’s best chocolate mousse.   At first it didn’t bother me.   She’s never had my mousse, so it was just easier to let her continue believing her delusional thoughts.   But over time I realized that some of our friends might actually believe her.   It was time for a throw down.

Prep work starting the day before.   We both spent considerable time cooking & cleaning.   Combined we made about six trips to various stores to get everything.   No matter how I plan out my shopping list I always seem to forget something.

I also frequently change the menu late in the game.   For example, I made a calzone and I had some left over pizza dough.   Knowing we also had a lot of left over blue cheese Cori asked what I could make with it.   Quickly I assembled a spinach, mushroom, blue cheese, & mozzarella calzone.   It was delicious.   The only problem was that it was unevenly stuffed.   Some other time I’ll write about my struggles with manipulating pizza dough.

We had just under twenty guests.   It’s always interesting mixing groups of friends.   With one exception, none of my friends had met each other before last night.   It was also the first time I got to meet some of Cori’s friends, none of whom knew my friends.   Adding to the mix our cool duplex mate, Jeanne invited some of her friends.   Luckily everyone got along and the party went really well.  Cori and Jeanne’s friends were all really cool.  My only complaint is that there were too many invisible women.  Actually almost all the women there were invisible.  I also played the roll of the invisible man more often than I would have preferred.  I’ll explain in another post.

I always find it fun when you end up going though more alcohol than you anticipated.   In the beginning of the night I was making most of the drinks.   I remember going through half a bottle of vodka.    As the night progressed people started helping themselves.   Before long the vodka and rum were both kicked.

The Results
I no longer make the best chocolate mousse in the world.   By a 2-1 margin Cori’s mousse was declared the winner.   Her’s was much darker and richer.   Mine was lighter and creamier.   My recipe calls for either cognac, rum or vanilla.   I used a  combination of rum and vanilla, but I splashed in a little too much rum.   You can actually see me using a paper towel to absorb some of it.   I’ve been humbled.

I’m still not entirely giving up on my recipe.   But next time I might need to make a layered mousse using both recipes.

Shame on me for not getting any pictures of the finished mousse.   I did however get some pictures of the aftermath in the kitchen.

Wiping up the alcohol

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This is where I lost the Mousse off. I accidentally splashed in a little too much rum. You can see the bottle of Pyrat Rum in background as I use a paper towel to absorb some of the excess.