A Vegetarian Birthday Party Dinner

We celebrated Carmina's birthday with a dinner

on St. Patrick's Day.

She's vegetarian,

so no corn beef and cabbage today.

What we had was so much better!

Jon made a beet vinaigrette for a small salad to start. 

I had no idea that the magenta sauce in the cup was the vinaigrette 

at the time that I took this photo.

Anyway, right before serving it, he dressed the salads for us.

It was really delicious.

For a small appetizer, 

he used up some leftover fancy spaghetti we had 

to serve with a vegetarian interpreted carbonara sauce: 

very buttery and Parmesan-y.

He topped it off with some truffle caviar.

We all had seconds.

For the main course,

we had cannelloni filled with spinach and ricotta 

(that first photo above) 

topped with saffron-and-paprika-infused oil.

Jon took sheets of fresh lasagna, halved, and cooked them.

While he did that, he baked the spinach and ricotta mixture to warm it up.

Then he assembled it.

This cooking-things-separate method made for a really nice presentation.

And you wouldn't believe how delicious it was!

For dessert we had olive oil cake,

fresh whipped cream,

and freshly pureed blueberries on the side.

The extra mini cakes we gave away as party favors.

I think it was a very good dinner party,

and we each had beer to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

The birthday girl got a bit tipsy

and our stomachs were full

and we had fun.

Success!