Vegan Cheese Party

Since moving to Houston, I've made some new vegan friends. One of them received a copy of Artisan Vegan Cheese as a birthday gift recently. She was planning to host a party where each person brought a cheese from the book, but her landlady is being totally nuts. I offered to host it, which made me really anxious. I can't even describe how much cleaning I did before anyone came over. My house is usually pretty clean anyways, because I'm a bit OCD, but I was moving furniture out of the way to vacuum all the tiny spaces any dust could accumulate. I even changed the air filters in my AC unit and my air purifier. My friends arrived and it went so smoothly. I provided some fresh baguette and crunchy bread from Whole Foods, as well as some Back to Nature crackers (Ritz-type crackers without the hydrogenated oils). I baked some little biscuits too, using this recipe, but they basically tasted like Earth Balance. All together, the guests brought cashew chevre, lentil crackers, gruyere, fruit, boursin, pita crackers, wine, olives, and the apple harvest cake from Whole Foods. We had a great time! So many interesting conversation topics - animal rights (duh), religion and faith, the nature of happiness, and other random things. We ended up spending 6 HOURS together! I figured people would be gone in just a couple hours, so I was pleasantly surprised by how late we were together. The first photo shows the cashew chevre (sprinkled with sumac), the gruyere, and the cheddar. The second photo shows the boursin. The last photo shows the whole spread.