June Dinner Club

I promise there is a "getting our house ready to sell" post coming up soon!  Prior to taking the sell-the-house plunge, we hosted Dinner Club on June 5th.  Our theme was Mexican Fiesta.  We love to watch Rick Bayless on tv and his cookbooks/websites are phenomenal resources.  The Mexican Fiesta menu featured:
-Tacos al Pastor (grilled pork tacos)
-Frijoles Refritos (refried beans)
-Arroz a la Mexicana (Mexican rice)

Per usual, we pulled the grill to the front of the house so that Mikey could mingle with the rest of us while we relaxed on the front porch.

While Mikey grilled, we snacked on homemade guacamole, chips and rustic breads that Katie & Lyndon brought:

Soon enough it was time for dinner.  In addition to the pork, Mikey grilled up red onions and pineapple for the taco filling.  This mixture was roughly chopped so that it was easy to scoop up the filling in to the corn tortillas:

As you can imagine, Mikey spent much of the day (prior to guests arriving) prepping for dinner.  He made homemade habenero hot sauce and a raw tomatillo salsa to top the tacos.  Additionally, he served homemade refried beans (the hit of the party) and mexican rice as side dishes.
Trust me, the beans below tasted way better than they look:

When I was uploading the photos for this post, I had a hard time remembering what these were! 
I tried convincing Mikey to do the writing for this post so that he could fill you in with all the details (ingredients & cooking technique) since I know a lot of you are interested.  Leave Mikey some love in the comment section if you are interested in having him write more detailed food posts in the future! 

I wish I hadn't been so distracted and forgotten to take an assembled taco photo. The salsas (bright orange & bright green), pineapple, red onion and marinated pork created a very colorful taco!

Dessert was provided by Nellie & Bruce.  Nellie made a cake that is only used for special occasions in her family.  My memory is a bit foggy of the cake specifics (blogging a month after the fact will do that!) but here is what my taste buds remember.
Layered yellow/sponge cake with a lemon custard filling topped with meringue & toasted pecans:

Notice my ONE tulip that came up this year (the squirrels always dig them up)!

The cake was wonderful and a great way to transition in to summer!!