Cooking for "outsiders"

I hosted my first dinner for non-vegans this past weekend.   I wasn't too concerned when we first discussed it, because we were cooking for a group of people in their mid 20's, who are for the most part interested in healthy living.  I thought it would be the perfect group of people to experiment on.   The closer we got to the dinner, the more I started second guessing myself.

The menu:  Appetizer was hummus with baked pita chips and crudités.  The entrée was a salad with red leaf lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, dried cranberries, chopped pear, toasted pecans, and homemade vinaigrette.  Alongside that we had a build your own entrée bar. 

We had quinoa, brown rice, roasted vegetables, (baby potatoes, carrots, red bell pepper, and butternut squash).  There was cashew cream to serve as a sauce.  Everyone made a stack with their favorite grain on bottom, followed by roasted vegetables, and topped with the cashew cream. 

So far, so good.  Everyone seemed to like the meal up to this point.  Then the trouble began.  I have not made any vegan desserts.  I don't cook a lot of desserts for just my husband and myself, so no experience with that yet.  I made a recipe for brownies.  Sounds yummy, right?  Well, I didn't mention that they were made with black beans.  They were really awful. 

I also made a pumpkin cheesecake, thinking that if it was good, I would repeat it for Thanksgiving.  Well, I won't be making this for Thanksgiving unless I am only feeding people I don't care for.  It was not good at all.  The crust was just graham crackers and applesauce.  It got nice and crisp in the oven, but by the time we cut it for dessert, the crust had lost it's crispness.  There was no hint of cheesecake, just a really heavy pumpkin filling.  They both went in the trash when everyone left. 

I told my husband when we began this new way of eating that there would be some really bad food coming out of our kitchen as we tried new recipes.  I am not familiar enough with the ingredients to be able to judge whether the recipe is good or not.  Hopefully as time goes by, I will get better at that and eliminate some of the bad recipes before ever trying them.


I am glad we had this group of people over.  I hope they saw that vegan food can be good, (except for my desserts).  Someone had to be the test group for me, and it couldn't have been nicer people.