SWANK

The jig is up, I will now reveal what I did yesterday. I had a dinner party! I've spent the last 3 weeks planning for last night, planning the menu, revising it and designing it. Planning also included writing a grocery list and a wine list, along with pulling a table scape together and getting all the necessary decorations. A lot of time and effort goes into planning a dinner party, but it so worth it and so rewarding to then share the fruits with others. I invited 3 good friends, Kelly, Kyle & Sarah... I wish I could have invited more, but my table only holds four. Someday I hope to have a larger dinner party with more people and more decorations. For now, I will have to have my dinner parties in shifts, so don't feel left out if you are reading this, your turn will come! Even with only having 3 guests over preparations still took all day yesterday. Cleaning and grocery shopping, setting the table and decorating my home. It is now officially Autumn, so I pulled out all my harvest\Halloween decorations. Someday I know I will be one of those over the top women who decorate for every holiday, to the point where it is probably obnoxious! (but i don't care! ) The theme of my meal was harvest as well, incorporating all the wonderful produce now in season!The most rewarding part of the dinner party was the cooking and baking. Pulling together a 5 course meal can be a real challenge, but it is one that i was willing to take on with heart & gusto.

The menu consisted of the following meals:

Apps: Endives with beet & blue cheese spread

Soup: Thai-Spiced Pumpkin Soup

Main: Linguine with Squash, bacon & goat cheese

Sides: Tuscan Style Cauliflower, Broccolini w\ red currant vinaigrette & herbed garlic bread

Dessert: Sunken Chocolate cakes with cinnamon ice cream with honey crisp apples in syrup.

( the original menu had the chocolate cakes with coffee ice cream, but to follow the harvest theme, I changed it to a more appropriate apple topping.)

I had a great time cooking all the food, timing everything so it was all ready as my guests arrived. My guests were gracious and beautifully dressed in their swankiest outfits. Sarah brought me lovely flowers and Kelly & Kyle brought me little "dinks" (as kelly's aunt calls them) mini muffin tins and pink measuring spoons! Love it!

We chatted and ate and chatted more and ate more. It was so nice and relaxed and fun... that it never once seemed like work in the long run. I am now thinking that planning parties and menus and cooking might be a really fun job. hmmmm....

Here is to a bountiful harvest, good food and even better friends!

Sunken Chocolate Cakes with Cinnamon Ice Cream & Cinnamon Apple Syrup
Cakes:
Ingredients:
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut in pieces, plus more for pans
1/4 cup sugar, plus more for pans
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
2 large eggs, separated
2 large egg yolks

Cinnamon Ice Cream

Directions:1. Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly butter 4 cups in a jumbo nonstick muffin pan, leaving the 2 center cups empty. Coat lightly with sugar, and set aside. Place butter and chocolate in a heat-proof bowl; set over a pan of simmering water. Stir occasionally, until melted and thoroughly combined. Remove from heat; set aside.
2. Combine the 4 egg yolks with 2 tablespoons sugar, and whisk until the mixture is pale yellow and thick. Stir in the melted chocolate-and-butter mixture.
3. Whisk egg whites until soft peaks form, add remaining 2 tablespoons sugar, and whisk until stiff and shiny but not dry. Fold into chocolate mixture. Divide batter among prepared muffin cups, and bake until set and slightly springy to the touch, about 25 minutes. Remove from oven, and transfer to a wire rack. Allow to cool for 15 minutes in pan; carefully run a knife around edges of cakes, and unmold. Serve each with a scoop of coffee ice cream and apples & syrup poured over the top.

Cinnamon Apple Syrup:

Ingrediants:

INGREDIENTS
1 Honey Crisp Apple - sliced
1/4 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons water
DIRECTIONS
In a saucepan, combine the apples, sugar, cinnamon and water. Stir to dissolve sugar, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, and simmer for 10 minutes, or until apples are soft and syrup has thickened. Serve over pancakes or ice cream.

Turtle Bread brings on the Memories

Yesterday was pay day, it was also Friday and I didn't feel like fighting traffic on my way home. The thought of driving to Linden Hills and stopping at the little shops was just so appealing. Linden Hills is such a quaint area of Minneapolis, and it holds plenty of memories. When I was 22 I was a nanny for a family in LH, and the two little girls Avery & Nathalie, and their wonderful nanny Sabrina spent many days traversing through Linden Hills. There are so many great shops and lovely homes in LH that you feel like you are on a set of a movie. (oh wait, they filmed parts of Jingle All the Way in LH.) I also lived in Linden Hills for a year a few years ago, it was such a transitional part of my life and everything was so up in the air. I had just left my full time job to go back to school full time to learn the craft of Jewelry Making & Gemology.

Anyway, back to yesterday. I stopped into Victory, one of my favorite Shabby Chic stores. They had these really fun candle votives with skulls & spiders & ravens. I settled on the raven, so very Edgar Allen Poe. I then went over to my favorite bakery Turtle Bread. I had a delicious bowl of split pea soup & a baguette. Split pea soup always reminds me of my friend Rachel. Back when we used to work in the kitchen at His Mansion, we would weekly have to make soup. On one particular day Rachel was in charge of making split pea soup. And since we made all our soups from scratch, we used ingredients like split peas that start out hard, but soften as they cook. Well for some reason or another the soup was a little too thick, a lot thick... and no amount of reassuring could convince rachel that it was edible. People ate it, I thought it was good. But if you asked her today she would probably still say that it was gross! I miss my times cooking with rachel in the kitchen. Lots of laughs and adventures, which the kitchen manager never thought was amusing. I think the final nail in the coffin is when I threw a huge cheese cutter across the room at rachel. Of course it didn't hit her and it was all in fun, but i think that was the last time we ever worked in the kitchen together at the same time! so sad! We had plenty other fun adventures in New Hampshire, so much so that one day I should write a book about them all. If you've ever read or seen Anne of Green Gables, Rachel and I were the modern day version of Anne Shirley & Dianna Berry. Kindred Spirits.

So back to Turtle Bread, I enjoyed my meal and then I ate my all time favorite cookie: Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookie! Meow!

I stopped into a few more stores and just meandered around to my little hearts content. My find of the day was a set of glasses that match my dinnerware! And they were 50% off! score!

Eventually I headed over to kyle & kelly's for a light salad and good times.

Today I have something up my sleeve that will be explained tomorrow...

hint: it has something to do with food!

Let's Gorge!

A fun night of food, friends, fun and more food! Tabitha hosted us at her place and served up some delicious lasagna with Italian Sausage and 2 lbs of cheese! whooo wheee! We gorged ourselves and thankfully Tabs made a full pan, and cute little one too. Then if that wasn't enough, I was ambitious and i made a pie. The same pie that I helped Kelly make this past weekend; Cinnamon Struesel Topped Pumpkin Pie. We gorged on that too. Tabitha also has a cute little bunny named Twitch, that is just a bundle of energy!


Paula digesting her food...
Bonnie, what's wrong with your finger????

Bonnie & Tabitha enjoying conversation, tea & pie...

Bonnie, Tabitha & Paula so happy together...
Amazingly wonderful lasagna! Yummy pumpkin pie (and I don't even like pumpkin pie!)
Twitch!

More Wedding Pics

Here are more very random pics (thanks james) of Joe and Teri's wedding... so much love and friendship in one room, its funny the world didn't explode!

Cindy Sideways... you should've seen her red pumps!!
Me through the eye of the lens through the eye of the lens...Joe & Teri doing the sideways dance....Jamie & Cindy toasting to me...Me and Shannon... are we dancing? crying on each other's shoulders? or saying goodbye? only we will ever know...

ANTM + Pasta Primavera (again)

It's back! my very very guilty pleasure: America's Next Top Model Cycle 9! I have been watching this show from the beginning and I love it! So fierce! I am not the only one who digs this show, my cousins kyle & kelly follow religiously too. So much so that kyle put together a ANTM pool to see who can pick the models in the order they will be booted off. After watching the premiere, the competition looks tight and I am hesitant to make any guesses. yet. Tyra's got her pictures in her hands representing the girl who will go on to be America's Next Top Model!
My favorite cookbook right now is Dorie Greenspan's Baking. Love the pictures and the recipes are wonderful and very insightful! I found my copy at a thrift store for $3 and it was best $3 I've spent in awhile! I've already made a couple of pies from the recipes in the book, and I was very happy with the results.

Oh and I just couldn't resist more of the pasta primavera I made the other day, of course I had to make more. So good, so good for you!

I am also finding that although I love my crushed red pepper flakes, even the really good ones from Penzey's, they just aren't cutting it anymore. Call me crazy, but i need to take it to the next level; Crushed Habanero Pepper Flakes! I am going to try my hand at making my own... can you feel the burn???

Pasta Primavera & Homemade Pie

Another weekend come and gone. Yesterday I had a nice day of just taking things slow. I slept in and when I work up around 10:00am, I was hungry. So being on this pasta kick I decided to yet again make another pasta dish. However, I wanted to make it as healthy as possible so I made my own version of Pasta Primavera w\ shrimp. (the recipe will magically appear at the end of this post.) I also stopped over at the cousins so Kyle could change the fuel filter on my car and I could hang with Kelly, who is bummed about still being crippled. :(
I brought her a harvest bouquet of flowers and some Fiery Habanero Doritos. And if you haven't tried them, you must! you must! After kyle so kindly fixed my car we chilled and decided the Little Oven would be a great place to eat. Grilled cheese never tasted better. When we got back Kelly was on a pie baking mission... so together we made a delicious Pumpkin with Cinnamon Struessel Pie. But since it was for a friend, we didn't get to sample. But it sure did smell good, and very autumnal too!

Pasta Primavera with Shrimp
serves 2

1 cup of Whole Wheat Penne Pasta cooked
1 Tbls Olive Oil
1 Clove of garlic, minced
1 Tbls dried Oregano
1 Tbls dried Parsley
lots of crushed red pepper flakes (if you can handle it!)
1 cup shrimp, deveined
1 cup chopped Zucchini
1 cup chopped tomatoes (i used the kind in a can with basil)
salt\pepper to taste
grated parm cheese

Cook pasta according to package.
In a large saute pan. Heat olive oil and garlic until soft.
Add oregano, parsley, crushed red pepper, zucchini & shrimp.
Saute until zucchini is tender and shrimp is done.
Add tomatoes and cooked penne, until warm
Season with salt & pepper and grated parm cheese.
sprinkle more crushed red pepper flakes for extra butt kicking!

Wedded Bliss

Yesterday I headed out to my ol hometown area of Carver County, for my friend Shannon's brother's wedding. I have known Joe, well for as long as I have known Shan. So little Joe is not that little anymore and he is now a married man. He was always Shannon's obnoxious little brother and now he is all grown up. I told him at the wedding that he was making me feel old, and his response was, "Nah, I remember when you used to tight-roll your jeans and everything was about Guns N' Roses." I don't know if that is the exactly what I want to be remembered for, but that's ok, that was a fun time in life!
This is what H20Town girls do at weddings...

The wedding ceremony was very nice and the reception was a lot of fun. Jaime & Cindy were there too, so we had a fun night of dancing, laughing and taking endless pictures with random poses. Fun Times!
I think I know you from somewhere? the meeting of james & cin...
someone special is out there they think to themselves, that or they're siamese tripletts....


ooh I love to dance and it feels so good when you are beside me...
cindy wants no part in this...