Progressive Dinner.

Last week, I organized a Progressive Dinner with some of my CCNM classmates.  A Progressive Dinner is a dinner-party, only instead of one friend hosting the dinner, everyone hosts the dinner!  It's like a Pub Crawl, only with food. You start at one person's place for appetizers, then move to the next house for salad or soup, then the main course is served at yet another house, and lastly, a final friend completes the night by serving dessert in his or her home. You can modify who makes what and how many courses depending on the number of people attending. It works well if you all live in relatively close proximity to each other, which was the case with this particular group of classmates. It is quite fun to not only visit each others's dwelling as the night progresses, but also you get to try a variety of different foods along the way!

Here is a recap (in pictures) of the dinner:

Appetizer 1: Cucumber-Soba-Sesame Stacks, courtesy of A.

Appetizer 2: Black Bean Salsa and Chips, courtesy of T.

Appetizer 3: Spring Rolls with Spicy Sauce, courtesy of M.

Main Course: Burrito Bowls (do-it-yourself), courtesy of L. 

Dessert: Salted Caramel Squares, made by me!

I made Salted Caramel Squares based off of this recipe but I made the following changes: all purpose gluten-free flour instead of almond flour, maple syrup in place of honey, no xylitol (used more coconut sugar), coconut oil instead of butter in the crust, 3/4 cup of coconut milk (not coconut cream, but then I omitted the extra honey in the caramel), and 100 g of 90% dark chocolate melted on top instead of carob. The picture is awfully bright (I took it outside, opps!), but if you zoom-in you can see some gooey caramel oozing out.  My first time making caramel (it was so good too and not hard!). Hands-down one of the best desserts I ever made. By the way, if you love the combination of salty & sweet, then you'll fall in love with these bars. Sea salt & chocolate is a surprisingly heavenly combination.