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Eating, drinking and tasting my way around the District.

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29 August 11

Throwing a Bridal Shower in 2 hours or less

My dear friend Katherine is getting married this weekend, so I thought it would be nice to throw a small get together for her to kick off the wedding week.

Problem was, My mom was in town last week, then I was in Seattle, then I had a wedding to attend Saturday, so I had almost no time to pull things together!


How did I do it, you ask? Here’s how.  I used what food stuffs I had in my kitchen, plus some things I’d gathered for Hurricane Irene preparedness (Oh yeah, that was happening this weekend too!)

So here’s how:

1. I purchased these cute flower garlands from Paper Source in Seattle and put them together Saturday evening.

2. Woke up around 10:30 Sunday and had G buy some groceries for me while I tidied the house

3. Got started on this cake lime-yogurt cake, beautiful, simple and hurricane Irene prompted me to buy 7 limes for $1 at the local latin gorcery. Rather than make a blackberry sauce, I smeared a jar of Blackberry jam I had on hand on top

4. I had some leftover seedy bread so I made a panzanella of cucumber, tomato, red onion and avocado.

5. turned to my old standby party recipe, rice tossed with herbed goat cheese, and a mixture of vegetables, this time I used zuzhinni, red and yellow peppers and red onion. The goat cheese adds a really interesting flavor to this dish.

finally I threw out some crackers and cheese (G’s idea) set the table up with all the accoutrements, and set out some booze and mixers (gin & white rum, grapefruit juice, ginger ale and limes)

And voila! Lovely bridal shower in almost no time at all!  It’s certainly a hectic race in those two hours, but totally doable if you use staples that you keep on hand, like rice, a few vegetables etc.

Now, my farm share has overloaded me with eggplant, any suggestions on what to do with it?

25 May 11

Dinner Parties on a Work Night

Do any of you get a bit of an adrenaline high after playing hostess? There is just something so exciting about seeing friends comfortably eating, drinking and chatting in your home. 

I’ve realized that one of my favorite things to do is introduce people to new yet approachable flavors. I love for people to taste new things, and decide to find ways to incorporate those flavors into their own lives. 

Tonight the majority of my dinner guests follow a paleo diet, meaning that they don’t eat grains, or carbohydrates. I was nervous that a meal with no carbs wouldn’t be filling enough but I decided to have some fun. I made a pork tenderloin, roasted asparagus and radishes with olive oil, capers and lemon and I attempted to make mashed cauliflower similar to mashed potatoes. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to mash things up quite enough, but thankfully cauliflower is delicious in all it’s forms! Everyone loved the radishes, loved the cauliflower and went crazy for my celtic grey sea salt, which I swear you all will love!

For dessert I’d planned to make affogato, but one of my guests brought some raspberry lambic and an idea struck. Lambic floats! We passed around one sample to see how people felt, and everyone fell in love. A little vanilla ice cream, a little lambic and that’s dessert!

I want dinner parties every day!

p.s. easiest way to entertain on a work night, roast everything! 

Themed by Hunson. Originally by Josh