St. Patrick's Day family feasting

I may not be Irish (well... maybe an 1/8th?), but I can definitely appreciate an opportunity for feasting when I see one! Last night my parents, my in-laws, and my husband's grandmothers all joined us for a Saint Patrick's Day dinner. It was a lot of fun!


The menu:
Corn and Wild Rice Cakes with Creme Fraiche and Smoked Salmon (Beach Plum Inn)
Mummy's Brown Soda Bread (Cooking Light)
Chopped Salad with Lemon and Dill (Ellie Krieger)
New England Boiled Dinner (Cooking Light)
Caramelized Onions and Apples (Mark Bittman)
Strawberry Shortcake Jelly Roll (Cooking Light)

And my dad brought a bottle of Chaucer's Cellars Honey Mead. Mmmm... very tasty with the strawberries!


If you look closely, you can see the boiled veggies piled in a green bowl. I painted that! I started the bowl back in January, and (finally) got back to the ceramics place last weekend and finished it. They had it fired and ready to go just in time for me to use for the dinner.


I'm really pleased with how it turned out. And it was perfect for a Saint Patrick's Day feast.

Star Quilt Along, Week 9

Here is my block for Week 9 of amandajean's Star Quilt Along:


Only 4 more stars to go! I kind of have a color-plan in my head, in hopes of making them all work. Now, if I can only remember it by the time the next block is posted...

Stitchery is on the slow side this week. I've been more focused on cooking. I've made some tasty stuff this week, including a bunch from Cooking Light:

• Peach Berry Upside Down Cake: I made this for my PEPS group; it was very pretty, but we were eating outside, and I think it wasn't at its tasty best heated up under the hot sun.
• Summer's Best Garden Salad: another one for the PEPS group; I loved all the various veggies and the light dressing. It was very refreshing and tasty.
• Chicken with Mushrooms in Garlic White Wine Sauce: quick and easy, and tasty; I used herbs d'Provence instead of tarragon.
• Strawberry Margarita Sorbet: mmmm... a delicious frozen treat; I love margaritas!
• Pork and Edamame Fried Rice: except I used chicken; it was very, very good and made excellent leftovers.

I also made a couple of recipes from The Petit Appetit Cookbook. It is focused on making food for babies and toddlers. I made meatloaf and mashed potatoes with carrots. My hope was that we could all eat together as a family and get the boy eating something new that is not related to the nugget family (as in chicken nuggets and fish sticks). Of course, papa was late getting home from work, and the boy refused to eat. So much for that plan! But, at least he ate some of the leftovers the next day, so hope is not lost.

Pumpkin pie all year long!

Yesterday, as I was making my menu/grocery list for the week, I was thumbing through one of my Cooking Light annual editions (2007 to be precise) looking for tasty stuff to make. And there it was, in January-February: the Pumpkin Pie Shake! We tried it tonight, and it was delicious. Of course, I cheated and used full-on tasty, fatty ice cream and heavy whipping cream (and I used rather more than 2 teaspoons), so it wasn't exactly "light"— but that really wasn't the point. It was dessert, in all of its fatty, calorie-laden glory. Sometimes, that's what you need.

Birthday fiesta

Today we celebrated the boy's first birthday. It was just family (the four grandparents, aunt, and us), but it was a lot of fun. I made four recipes from Rick Bayless's Mexican Everyday. The book was a birthday gift to me last year (thanks, Mikki!!!) and I absolutely love it. Every recipe I've tried so far has been a winner. And, even more awesome, is that they really are "everyday" kinds of recipes. I don't know if you've ever checked out any of Bayless's other books, but the ones I've looked at tend to include pretty hard core, cook-all-day types of recipes. This one, on the other hand, features recipes that are really do-able in a reasonable amount of time (most in less than 40 minutes to an hour). And they are freakin' good!

Today we had Red Chile Enchiladas, a romaine salad with Creamy Avocado Dressing, Chipotle Meatballs, and Cowboy Beans. The enchiladas and beans I had made previously (so I knew I had at least two things that would be edible). The other two were what I like to term, "experimental"-- meaning something that I haven't cooked before.

The Creamy Avocado Dressing was fabulous. Very creamy, not too spicy, full of flavor, and a beautiful green color. And it was simple to make. A few ingredients (1/2 an avocado, mayo, oil, garlic, cilantro, salt) + blender = YUM! And, just as the book suggests, it was indeed excellent with just a salad of crisp romaine.

The Chipotle Meatballs were also quite good. The preparation was a little more extensive and time consuming, but the end product was worth it. The secret ingredient in these: mint. It really made a nice contrast to have the cool, refreshing mint flavor in the meatball paired with the slightly spicy red sauce.

The enchiladas and beans were very good (mmmm... Cowboy Beans....). Though the enchiladas are a more in depth process (heat the dried chiles, puree, strain, cook, simmer, add broth, simmer some more), there is just something really gratifying about knowing that I made the sauce myself (as opposed to just opening a can o' sauce).

To top off the festivities: birthday cupcakes! I used the Yellow Cupcake recipe from Baking Illustrated. Because the butter frosting offered in that book included eggs, I instead went with a Butter Frosting from an old Better Homes & Garden baking book-- confectioners' sugar, butter, milk, and vanilla. So simple, but oh, so sweet and good. They paired perfectly together.

It was a lot of fun watching the boy as he ate his very first cupcake. It was, of course, very messy-- but he clearly enjoyed it, and all of us had a lot of fun watching him! He ate almost the entire cupcake, too! Can't blame him... they were pretty tasty. :)

Maybe not so deceptive...

...but pretty tasty ("delicious" might be stretching a bit). Thus far, I have made three recipes from Jessica Seinfeld's cookbook, Deceptively Delicious.

The Chicken Nuggets were not at all deceptive. I used broccoli puree, and the nuggets were pretty much green. But-- they were very tender, and I did like the flavor (nothing special flavor-wise, but it was good). They were even tender enough for me to give some to my year old son. His first chicken nuggets! And he actually seemed to like them, too!

Next up was the Spaghetti Pie. Again, broccoli puree, but also carrot. The end result was very tasty. But it looked nothing at all like the picture in the book. The pie was juicy and saucy, and there was no "crunchy crust" as the book claims. So I was a little disappointed in that, but still pleased with the flavor. And my husband thought it was great.

Finally, I tried the Gingerbread Spice Cake. This one was actually a little deceptive-- there was broccoli and carrot puree ("Enough with the broccoli puree!" was my husband's response), but with all of the spices, neither flavor stood out. Mainly, I think they just helped to make the cake moist. Not my favorite spice cake, by any stretch; in fact, it was not particularly cake-like (more bread-like in texture... denser, heavier than cake). But I do like how healthy it is. The only fats: 1/4 cup of canola oil and 1 egg. And it included a mix of whole wheat and all-purpose flour (so a little bit of whole-grain goodness there). Of course, then we topped it with ice cream and caramel sauce. So much for "healthy"...