Easy, do-ahead dinner party

So, with the holidays, and travel, and getting back into a groove, I have been cooking, but not posting. Yesterday was my son's birthday party. We also had a long-standing dinner plan to see dear friends. I knew I'd be tired from the birthday, so I decided to make an easy dinner. It was really good! Here is the menu:

Blanched Asparagus with Sesame Mayo
Petit Dejuner cheese with crackers

Grilled Pork tenderloin with Bavarian spice rub
Herbed Couscous
Roasted balsamic vegetables
Lemony salad with parmesan cheese and homemade croutons

Truffles
mini stroop wafels
tea

The sesame mayo recipe is from my sister's friend who ALWAYS has the best recipes, simple and delicous! I made this earlier in the day.
1.5 cups Best Food's (Hellman's) mayonnaise (I used light)
2.5 T sesame seeds, toasted in a frying pan
1 T fresh lemon juice
2 T sesame oil
mix all and refrigerate. Flavor improves over time.

I rubbed the pork tenderloins with olive oil and then salt, pepper, and a good shake of Bavarian Spice mix (a gift from my mom in my christmas stocking this year--so good!) I grilled them for 10 minutes per side and let sit 10 minutes before slicing.

Couscous: sautee 1/2 white onion, minced, in olive oil. Add 1.5 cups vegetable broth. This can sit until you are just ready to eat. Bring the broth to a boil, remove from heat, stir in 1.5 cups couscous and cover for 5 minutes. When ready to serve, fluff with a fork.

I find that vegetable broths vary HUGELY from brand to brand. Some are too salty, some are tasteless! I love the knorr cubes in the yellow box, but I have also discoved a vegetable broth paste in a jar that you keep in the refrigerator. It is sold at TJs and is called "Better than Boullion." Just mix with water and you are ready to go.

Vegetables:
I chopped up an eggplant, 3 yellow peppers, 1 red onion, and used a bag of butternut squash cubes. To save time, I put all in a ziploc bag with salt pepper olive oil and balsamic vinegar earlier in the day. Then I roasted the veggies at 400 for about 45 minutes. In retrospect, I think it would have tasted better to slice the veggies in advance but wait until they were ready to go into the oven to dress with oil and balsamic. The eggplant was a little bit mushy--but still had good flavor.

The nice thing about this dinner is that aside from dressing the salad and fluffing the couscous, there isn't too much to do at the last minute. I was able to relax and enjoy our company!

Choo Choo birthday cake

Here's a photo of the train cake I made for my son's 2nd birthday.

The cake was pretty easy to make--I hunted around online to find recipes and sort of cobbled together this design.

I used 3 chocolate cake mixes (betty crocker) for the train cars. I baked 3 large loaves in greased and floured bread pans, increasing the cooking time to 50 minutes. I also had enough batter to cook a cylinder for the engine. I used a bean can, paper removed and thoroughly washed, greased and floured. I filled the can 3/4 full with batter, placed it upright in another pan to catch any overflow and baked for 40 minutes. Once the can had cooled slightly, I used a can opener to cut the bottom of the can and the cake slid out easily.

I cut the loaves into cars and frosted them with tinted canned cream-cheese style frosting. The wheels are 1/2 of an oreo, stuck into the frosting. The smokestack is 3 oreos stacked and frosted. The headlight is half an oreo with white frosting. The coal car has piroline cookies to create the edge and heaped up m&ms for the coal. The tracks are black licorice and chocolate covered wafer cookies for the trestles. The "gravel" is crushed oreos.

My son went crazy! He loved it! It was easy to cook, and the assembly was lots of fun. I made it the night before and it was still good the next day.