My Birthday Potluck

On Friday, I turned twenty-two years old. 22! In honor of so momentous an event, my house banded together and spent forty-eight (22x2+4?) hours making dough. We kneaded, buttered and rolled until we had three pizza doughs, two challah doughs, one pie dough, and about a billion pairs of pants covered in flour. One of the challahs became a-too-good-to-wait-till-tomorrow midnight birthday cake, while all the rest of the dough got tucked into the over-stuffed refrigerator and saved for my party.

Out of love for my twenty two year old stomach, I hosted a potluck birthday party. While my apartment contributed a surplus of carbs to the table, all of my friends really one-upped us with lasagna, risotto, surf-n-turf nachos, scallops bites, cheese plates, salads, strawberry shortcakes, and lots of wine and beer. It was a real smörgåsbord ( a word I always assumed was Yiddish but now see is actually Swedish?!?!) to be proud of. Here are a few pictures, which will never do justice to the plethora or quality of dishes, but are ample enough to give readers a (virtual) taste:


How we planned our prep


Parm-ing the s**t out of this pizza!


SO PROUD. Pesto, caramelized onion, and goat cheese pizza on our homemade dough!



Our challah, Daniel's ragu lasagna, our scallion turkey balls with soy-ginger sauce (courtesy of NYT), and Kaitlin's asparagus

AJ prepping the steak for his nachos, Sabina's Greek salad, our challah, Matt's tequila (Oh, Matt.)

The table. Notice: AJ's scallop bites on the right, which although meant to be an amuse-bouche of sorts, really stole the show.


Kaitlin and Sophie's strawberry shortcake/angel food cake.


How I look when presented with so many delicacies all at once! FULL MOUTH.


Cutting my cake! Thank you all so much for making my birthday so memorable...