Will and I have decided to make special dinners on Sunday nights. We spend a nice chunk on Saturday planning and shopping and sometimes prepping. Then Sunday we invite guests over for a nice, long, leisurely dinner.
This week’s dinner is highly inspired by our recent trip to Paris. We’re majorly digging French food right now, y’all.
Escargots de Bourgogne
Our big souvenir from Paris was an escargot set with all of the accoutrements (see below) that we bought at a store called Guy DeRenne. I would liken it to the kitchen/tableware department of Crate & Barrel but with all things French. We ordered our snail shells and canned escargots from Amazon.com and Will whipped up a traditional Bourgogne compound butter.
Roast Chicken with White Wine, Lemon & Herbs de Provence
Will used our beer can chicken rack to make this roast chicken. Instead of beer in the can, we put dry white wine and some slices of lemon. Then he stuffed butter and Herbs de Provence under the chicken skin and generously all over the outside and roasted it in the oven. It was seriously the most flavorful, moist chicken ever. And so beautiful!
Gateau de Crepes
I’m a huge fan of crepes. While we were in Paris, I vowed to learn how to make them. Thanks to my fantastic birthday gift of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child and Simone Beck, I had all of the instruction I needed. I made up the crepes yesterday and kept them in the fridge until today. Then I carefully followed Julia’s instructions to make a Mornay sauce, a spinach filling and a mushroom filling. Then the crepes get layered with alternating fillings, covered with the Mornay and a bit of extra Swiss, and baked in the oven like a cake. Amazing!
Orange Almond Cake
I saw this Orange Almond Cake on Laura Calder’s French Food at Home and decided I needed to steal the recipe. It only contains eggs, orange zest, orange juice, sugar, almond flour, Grand Marnier, and candied orange rind. I used orange marmalade instead of candied orange rind and it was too bitter – do not recommend. But the cake itself was delicious and seriously as easy as making cake out of a box – no joke.
We are moving into a new era of food adoration in our house. This also means we need to move into a new era of gym attendance. But it’s sure fun to plan a menu that’s not so everyday, work together in the kitchen to bring it to the table and then enjoy it with people we love.
This Saturday is one of Nashville’s most time-honored traditions. It’s the 69th running of the Iroquois Steeplechase to benefit the Monroe Carrell Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. And although the event raises tons of money for the Children’s Hospital (over $8M over the 26-year relationship), I was still feeling a little funny about putting on a sundress and hat and sipping cocktails while my fellow Nashvillians are cleaning up the wreckage in their homes this weekend.
(Image courtesy The Enabler from Flickr)
So my hubby and I decided to take one small step to funnel some good to our flood victims from Steeplechase day. We’ve asked our guests to pack a little extra folding money when they meet us for this weekend’s festivities. As we always do, our little tailgating crew will draw horses out of a hat and place small bets. But this time, Will and I will match the winning purse up to $100 and donate the proceeds to the winner’s flood-related charity of choice. We’re encouraging our guests to donate their winnings as well. We figure maybe it will make the betting a little more exciting if dollar amounts are increased and do a little good to boot. You know how it is, a little booze and a bit of excitement and all of a sudden the charitable donations start to flow. Just ask anyone who has ever chaired a live auction for charity!
I thought I would share this idea via my blog in case others want to jump on the bandwagon. If you are thinking of supporting flood victims through your Steeplechase festivities this weekend in other ways, please let me know and we’ll post those ideas here. I’d love to hear from you!
Giddy up, Nashville! We’re going to be ok!
Although I love my job and I love seeing my awesome co-workers (hi guys!), at this particular moment I am terribly sad that I am in LA for work. Because if I were home, I would gather up some Nashville friends and host a Tree of Hearts party straight away!
How beautiful is this!?
I’ve got to credit the photo and the backstory to one of my favorite blogs, Style Blueprint.
But before I go there, let me tell you how crazy the blogosphere can be. The tree pictured above is just around the corner from my house. Notice the sweet little twinkle lights? Across the neighborhood and through the leafless branches, these twinklers had been taunting me. Why? We’ve joked in our house that we are cruising for a red neck ticket because our white icicle lights are still hanging from the gutters of our house, as if it were December 24. Obviously, it’s February 10 and WAY past the acceptable time frame for Christmas lights. But it has just been so cold in Nashville that the idea of heading down to our neighbor’s house to borrow the ladder, dragging it back to our yard, and pulling down those lights has been just way too much of a chore to even consider. So when my hubby saw those twinkles from across the neighborhood and through the leafless branches, he decided we were in the clear. If they can do it, so can we.
But a few days later when I drove down Leonard and saw how this home owner had augmented her white Christmas lights with hearts I understood that they were indeed not cruising for a red neck ticket as we are. I thought it was super cute and my thief’s brain immediately got to chewing on how I could hang hearts from my gutter line to get some more mileage out of the white lights ritual. As my mind’s eye shuffled through all of the store-bought heart options I could dream up, nothing really looked fabulous to me. Considering that this idea would most likely send my husband up the ladder once again, I decided I should take a pass.
Until today.
Because now I understand that the heart decor is about so much more than just looking fabulous. It is about being a fabulous friend and sharing love on Valentine’s day. How do I know? Enter Style Blueprint. My neighbor’s blog featured this awesome post with the so sweet back story of a Tree of Hearts ritual that started in the northeast to cheer a friend who had breast cancer. In the middle of the night, a woman snuck into her dear friend’s yard and hung hand-made hearts all over the tree to cheer her when she saw it in the morning. The tradition caught on and now it’s an annual ritual there. The house around the corner with the darling heart tree is a transplant from that very neck of the woods!
Style Blueprint is calling for this to become a Nashville tradition and I have to agree that it is fantastic and absolutely should. They are even suggesting that a non-profit should take on the preparation of Tree of Hearts kits as a fundraiser. Genius! So in the spirit of blogosphere stealing, I mean sharing, I’m posting it right here even though my work schedule this week prevents me from participating. But 2011 will be the year for my first annual Tree of Hearts party and you’ll have to tune in here to see the results. Nashville readers, if you want to be on the invite list, let me know in the comments below! For those of you who are in town right now, there’s still time to make it happen!
Earlier this week, I wrote a post about the Real Simple inspired Wrapping Brunch I threw. I promised food details so here they are!
As I mentioned in that post, I served Eggs Benedict Souffle, Banana Breakfast Cake, Fruit Salad, Biscuits, Tea, Coffee, Bloody Marys and Pomegranate Mimosas. To keep things easy, I bought pre-cut fruit salad and frozen biscuits. At the bar, I served things DIY style. For Bloody Marys I offered Zing Zang, celery, garlic-stuffed olives, pickled okra, lemon wedges, celery salt, prepared horseradish, Worcestershire sauce, and black pepper. For the Pomegranate Mimosas, I set out chilled champagne and a small pitcher of POM Wonderful juice. The guests knew what to do!
I prepared the Eggs Benedict Souffle the night before and let it set in the refrigerator overnight. The faux-hollandaise that accompanies the souffle had to be made the morning of the party but that was no big deal. Here’s the recipe, shared without permission but with gratitude to my husband’s cousin who owns and operates a fabulous ranch in Colorado. This guy knows how to entertain and this casserole is always a HUGE hit! Click the image for a printable 4×6.
I also prepared the Banana Breakfast Cake the night before. This cake is more like a breakfast bread that is made in a bundt pan. I used a Williams-Sonoma Heritage Bundt pan that I mention here only because my cake totally stuck! I don’t know if it was the recipe or my oven or the pan but it sure did! But taking Julia Child’s advice to never apologize for a culinary mistake, I put that cake on my cake stand and out on the table. It tasted great so who cares. Here’s a shot of what was left of the cake after the party …
And now that your mouth is watering, here’s the recipe. Provided without permission but with gratitude to Lynn Christman. Lynn gave me this recipe at one of my bridal showers and I can tell it’s going to become a family favorite! I used dried cranberries but I think dried cherries would be A-MAY-ZING. I’ll be using those next time. Click the image for a printable 4×6.
Last year I saw an idea in Real Simple magazine for a holiday wrapping party. The article suggested inviting 3-5 friends over on a weeknight for a simple supper and gift-wrapping session. The theory was your friends will appreciate some time together at the holidays even more if you can take something off their to-do list rather than adding something on (another cocktail party???). You can read more about Real Simple’s concept here.
At the time I was living in cramped quarters but I loved the idea and decided that Christmas 2009 was my year. I wanted to take it up a few notches from the Real Simple suggestion and invite 12 folks for Saturday brunch plus send good, old-fashioned, paper invitations instead of an eVite. People just don’t send paper invitations enough in my opinion! So I mustered up my inner poet and came up with this rhyme (sorry for blacking out my contact info, you can’t be careful enough these days):
To decorate for the party, I used my glass and silver containers and filled them with cards, tape, scissors, bows, ribbons, and tissue paper. I found some great deals on wrapping supplies at Costco. I arranged these in the center of my dining room table with a small arrangement of flowers.
I served Eggs Benedict Souffle, Banana Cake, Fruit Salad, Biscuits, Tea, Coffee, Bloody Marys and Pomegranate Mimosas. I prepped everything the night before except for the sauce for on top of the souffle (which was easy to whip up the morning of the party) and served it all from a buffet in my breakfast room. I’ll post the recipes later this week.
Here are some of my friends enjoying the party. Sorry for the bad photo quality!
I didn’t follow Real Simple’s advice to the letter but I liked my inspired party idea better anyway! I think I’ll make it an annual affair.
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