TINY DINNER CLUB GOES CUBAN

I may have mentioned before that the more fun I am having, the less photos I take? Well, that holds doubly true when the event is at my own house. Which is why I have so little to show for the latest meet-up of our Tiny Dinner Club. Since I chose a restaurant on my last turn, it was my time to cook, so I chose to do a Kinda Cuban But Not Really dinner.

If only I hadn't been so busy cooking, I might have remembered to snap a photo of Hubby's little Cuban cigar/rum station he had set up, complete with the cedar strips they taught us to use for the proper lighting of a cigar. Or I might have remembered to snap one of his mojito prep area, or of us all enjoying them out on the balcony with my brother and sister-in-law's Cuban dip, while listening to Alexa's Cuban Jazz lineup.

The main course consisted of Cuban Rice, which has a couple of cloves of smashed garlic added to the cooking water; Cuban Sleeping Beans, which are black beans with lots of veggies and spices that must be cooked the day before and allowed to sleep in the fridge overnight in order for the flavors to meld, then finished off with a dash of vinegar and a bit of sugar; and my not so Cuban but oh-so-good-at-Thanksgiving Spicy Pork Tenderloins With Orange-Cranberry Sauce. For dessert I pulled out an old recipe for Hubby's favorite birthday cake -- a French Vanilla Cake with sort of a Praline Frosting, which I didn't think to photograph until it was half gone!

My favorite part of the whole dinner? Hubby's spec-TAC-ular mojitos. How spectacular were they? Well, as most of you know, I'm not really a drinker -- especially anything with hard liquor in it -- and I finished off one whole mojito. He had never made them before so he started googling for recipes, and we were lucky enough to find one for the Hotel Nacional Mojito -- the one our tour guide claimed to be the best mojito in all the world. I think he just might be right about that! Here is the recipe -- you can thank me later.