4 Layer Cookie Bars + The Worst Housewarming Party Ever

If you've been reading this blog/if you know me at all, you know how excited I was/am about our new apartment. So excited I decided to throw a housewarming party! The apartment's not huge so I wanted to make sure not to invite too many people (especially because some people might bring other people...etc.), but I also wanted to invite enough that people would actually come. I made a facebook event, and texted, inviting somewhere around 10-15 people, with around 2-3 weeks notice before the date. There were more people I would have loved to invited, but, again, space issues. I was so thrilled! A good amount of people told us they would at least maybe be coming, and some said they were definitely! I planned the menu, bought lots of soda, bought snacks, made cheesy chicken dip and 4 Layer Cookie Bars (recipe below). I decided to make the 4 Layer Cookie Bars because they looked good, but also like the kind of thing that are perfect for sharing (not like the thing you want to hide away all to yourself...like a certain chocolate decadence I will post sometime). I cooked, we cleaned the entire apartment, and then pretty much spent all of party day waiting...and waiting....and waiting. 2 people ended up showing up. One of them was my neighbor who's door is like 2 feet from mine. It was a disaster (don't get me wrong, Robert and Brandon were fun and I was so happy they came but....table full of food, me dressed up, music playing....4 people total). I was completely devastated. I started texting extra people. I got, all on that day, a barrage of texts from people cancelling (for perfectly good reasons, I'm not mad at anyone for not coming, I understand. It just figured they all would have something come up on the day of the one party I throw). It was just dead. I kept fighting back tears. Barely any of the food got eaten. Poor Michael had to eat practically nothing but chips for a couple weeks. And I ate way more of these cookie bars then my tummy should have allowed me. The cookie bars came out great, Robert and Brandon raved about them-definitely make them when you're entertaining! The moral of this story, for me, though, is that I just should not throw parties. They always end this way. *sigh*

4 Layer Cookie Bars

Adapted slightly from Picky-Palate "The Motherlode Layered Cookie Bars"

Making lemonade!

I'm not actually making lemonade. But I AM taking these "lemons" and making lemonade in the form of this version of oil pasta.

This was my lunch yesterday, and today. I used whole wheat linguine this time (something I'd been nervous to try-turns out tastes just as good! So I'll probably use that from now on), and put some of the cut up chicken breast from my botched attempt at delish.com's Chicken alla Milanese in it. A thoroughly lovely meal! Oh, and yesterday I made some extra insane brownies. I'll share those with you later ;).

(Note: I don't advise trying to make that recipe from delish.com, I think it may have been wrong. 1 cup of parsley just does not seem right, as my poor chicken can attest.)

Failure

Well, folks, one of the saddest things that can happen while cooking happened today. I tried a new recipe (for "Chicken alla Milanese"), and it was not good. It tasted extremely strongly of parsley and it just was a disappointment and a failure. And worse, it was a waste. I wasted food, time, and money. To try to at least get something out of it, I scraped the parsley mixture off the chicken breasts and will save them to try to put the chicken in something else (such as making a Campbell's Select Chicken Noodle soup more chicken-y, like I ended up doing for my lunch). It's times like this I really can't wait until Michael moves here, because even if he doesn't like it, he'll eat it anyway. Anyone else have recipe failure happen to them? Sucks, huh?