what do you do, hotshot?

[fakely_mctest]

Like Speed only far, far boringer.

I'm doing a birthday dinner again this year since last year's was so much fun. I need food suggestions. Last year I had:

appetizers

• cheese and crackers
  
• grapes
  
• hummus with pretzel sticks

main dishes

• vegetarian gumbo
  
• rosemary/lemon marinated broiled chicken skewers
  
• red beans and rice
  
• green salad
  
• vinegar cucumber salad

I started with three bottles of wine and homemade iced tea. Katie brought sangria and the cucumber salad. Janel brought lemon merangue pie for dessert.

I'm not even going to bother with a meat dish this time. It's too weird to cook something you can't do a taste test on. Plus, standing in the meat section makes me queasy. I'll probably do the same appetizers -- they were easy. I don't want to make gumbo again (even though it was quite tasty), but something that I could make a day before and just heat up the day of the party would probably mean the salvation of my mental health.

I'll get wine again. And maybe make a vodka limeade. I want to get a cake from Cakelove. Either:
Strawberries and Cream
Fresh strawberries are paired with 3 layers of fluffy, vanilla cake. Authentic vanilla extract richly flavors the buttercream that robes this beautiful, popular cake.

Or:
Vanilla on Vanilla
3 layers of vanilla buttercream on rich vanilla butter cake. Straightforward and simple, this classic combination is a popular favorite.

The vanilla cake is slightly cheaper, but that's not really the issue. I looove vanilla cake and love strawberry cakes just a bit less, but do you think more people would like the strawberries and cream?

I just made myself hungry.