Weekend Cooking- Two Parties, One Week

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Every summer we go back to central New York to visit my family. This year we rented a home on Skaneateles Lake with a pool and everyone had a great time splashing around. We invite our friends over for a party and it's always good to see everyone and catch up.

The beautiful pool area

This year we also celebrated my nephew's high school graduation with a small party. I decided to try some new Pinterest recipes, even though I generally don't make new recipes for the first time at a party, I felt confident that the ones I chose would work well.

As our appetizers, I made two sweet dips- Creamsicle Fruit Dip and Monster Cookie Dough Dip. My brother loved the Fruit Dip (it really did taste like a creamsicle) and the Monster Dip was a huge hit.

We served the Creamsicle Fruit Dip with strawberries, grapes, cantaloupe and pineapple, and I found the pin on SixSistersStuff.com


The Monster Cookie Dough Dip is served with mini pretzels, graham crackers and apple slices and everyone was digging in. The recipe came from TheGirlWhoAteEverything.com. 

The savory dips started with Seven Layer Individual Dips, which just looks so darn cute.


It aslo came from SixSistersStuff and everyone loved them.

I also made Mary Alice's Hoagie Dip, which my sister-in-law Brigette has made for several occasions and is always a fan favorite. She found it on FoodNetwork.com


My sister brought pulled pork from her pig roast, so we made sliders. I also added Walking Tacos, which became the talk of the party, much to my surprise. You cook the ground beef, add taco seasoning, simmer and place in a crockpot. Then you set out individual bags of Fritos and Doritos, along with your taco bar toppings- shredded cheese and lettuce, chopped tomatoes, sliced black olives and green onions, sour cream and taco sauce.

A sign with directions- grab a bag of Fritos or Doritos, crunch the bag a little, open the bag, add ground beef and then your favorite toppings, grab a fork and eat. There's no taco mess and it's so easy. Everyone was talking about it, how they are going to use this at their next party and we even ran out of taco meat, which shocked me. I got this recipe from my sister-in-law Kay, who served them at three graduation parties to much acclaim.

The mad rush for Walking Tacos

For our friends' party, I made another batch of Individual Seven Layer Dips, and So Cal Fajita Dip with leftover steak from dinner the previous night. This is always a big hit.

This one came from ohsweetbasil.com

We made a few batches of Raspberry Mango Sangria, which has quickly become our favorite summer party drink of choice.

This is from MarthaStewart.com

Maria brought her world famous Pumpkin Cookies, (which my family demolished the next day) and Barbara made Summer Pizza Squares, which also mysteriously disappeared the next day. I so love when people share their best dishes with friends.

Both parties were wonderful, we played corn hole and ping pong at the graduation party, and we all laughed so hard at our friends' gathering that we had headaches and stomachaches. One of our friends, Rick, really hit then nail on the head. He said that we could not see each other for ten years, and when we did get together, it was like no time had passed; we just pick up where left off. That is so true.

My favorite food from the week was this Creamsicle Cake, which came from Reese's, a local family owned restaurant that makes their own ice cream. This has been a favorite of mine for years, and  it brought back all kinds of great memories.

Creamsicle Cake- yum

What are your favorite party recipes to share? Tell me about them in comments.