rum pretty much everywhere

Last Saturday, spurred mostly by my craving for a mojito, we hosted a dinner party with a Cuban theme. (Melissa, I wish we'd taken a picture of our dirty-dishes aftermath, because our kitchen was truly a disaster zone. Yours looked downright orderly compared to the monster we created.) Here I am, long before the guests arrived, um, "testing" the mojito proportions. Yeah, that's it.

(That glass of wine in the background? Also mine, I'm afraid.)

I made black beans with coconut rice and fried plantains--to the black beans, I added a healthy dose of smoked paprika (I love it, love it, love it) since I wasn't adding bacon, so it would still have that smoky character. Funny how it starts out so colorful:

and ends up like this:

Here's the slow-cooked, marinated-for-two-days Cuban pork:

and the empanadas:

the coconut & rum flan:

and the rum cake, which one guest suspected was actually making her tipsy (it is indeed pretty well soaked in rum syrup):

the whole spread: