the non-mandatory potluck

a couple of weeks ago, we had a bit of a going away party for my friend Lara who is spending part of the year studying in spain. it seemed cheap and fun to eat in so we planned a "food-optional" potluck. as some of my friends noted, it's probably better off that way unless we wanted frozen burritos for dinner and stomachaches for dessert. i made some appetizer-type things with a recurring theme of about 3 ingredients in different combinations.. kind of like pho. seriously, those pho restaraunts could cut their menu in half if they just had a single listing of types of meat to put in their noodles instead of listing every possible combination of rare steak, well done flank, tripe, etc. hmm.. i'm deviating. well, i had rounds of toasted french bread i'd rubbed with garlic and topped with either tomato with herbs, thick-cut ham, or brie cheese. and on a brilliant suggestion from a comrade in college cooking, wrapped some of those foul pillsbury instant croissants around fillings of vegetables (leftover from lara's dish) and ham and baked as the istructions dictated. it didn't turn out tasting bad and people thought they were cute.

much cuter was the vegetable lasagna lara and her friend made from scratch! check out the bell pepper octopus and sea star. that ups the tastyness 10x because of the cute factor. it had bell peppers, mushrooms, zuchini, tomatoes, onions, and a whole lot of other stuff in it which i can't remember. they layered it with mozzerella and topped with parmesan and a little bit of gorgonzola. the gorgonzola really added a bit of kick to it.

that and a really ripe pineapple was enough to feed 7. i heard that a good way to tell if a pineapple is ripe is to smell it and if you can pull out one of the topinner leaves easily.