And it has begun… the major party prep for my Dad’s 1931 Speakeasy themed 8oth birthday party! Not certain how many, if any, recipes I may get up this week, but I will be keeping you up to date on the party preparations.  Today’s tasks; find, get out, and clean all of the glasses, dishes, bottles, and party decor.  Out of that list, “finding” is the hardest part! I have SO much stuff and it is stacked, stored, and stashed all over this house. The good news is that I don’t have to rent anything, the bad news, I have to find it first! [Read more →]

Today is Eugene Robert Otter’s 80^th birthday. Who is Gene Otter?  My dad; that handsome 20 something year old in the picture above, that’s who.  Happy birthday, Dad!  If you follow this blog then you already know that I am in the middle of planning his big 80^th birthday party, which will be held on Saturday, April 30^th.  The reason we’re waiting nearly two weeks to hold the party is because today it is still Lent and my dad gives up all alcohol for Lent and he wants to party at his party, so the weekend after Easter works best.

Today is also this year’s Tax Day.  Three days later than usual due to a holiday in Washington, D.C. that occurred on Friday, April 15^th.  Tax Day is a big deal at our house because Dave is a CPA and has been working non-stop for several months now and the end is finally here!

With all the celebrating happening around here, I’m going to post some crafty Easter stuff today instead of a recipe.  I’ll appear on Channel 12 Valley Dish twice this week.  First in a taped segment with Marissa on Wednesday, April 20^th, where we demonstrate how to make these gorgeous silk tie Easter eggs. Then again on Good Friday, April 22^nd, when I will show you how to set up a beautiful and natural Easter buffet. Here’s a little sneak peak at a couple of the elements involved.  Be sure and watch both the egg and buffet segments at 3:30 on Channel 12.

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Before we get to today’s recipe I want to let you know about a change to the summer schedule.  I’ve changed Week 5 to a new format. It is now a “tween/teen” week for 11-16 year olds and will take place from Monday, June 27-Friday, July 1. There are still six spaces available for that week, so if you are interest, go to the “Classes” page on the left and check it out!

And speaking of kids… This dessert can easily be made “kid-friendly” by substituting 1/2 cup fresh orange juice for the Grand Marnier and Cognac in the compote.

This, the forth – and final – for a little while, recipe installment in the 80th birthday party theme incorporates two interesting food-related items from 1931.

In 1931 the sidecar was created  by Harry MacElhone of Harry’s Bar in Paris during prohibition here in the States. To make the famous drink; pour 1  1/2 -ounces Cognac or Armagnac, 3/4-ounce Grand Marnier or Cointreau, and 1/4-ounce fresh lemon juice into a cocktail shaker filled with ice, shake well and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Also in 1931, General Mills introduced Bisquick.  According to General Mills, Bisquick was born when one of their sales executives met a train dining car chef who mixed lard and the dry ingredients for biscuits ahead of time. So between the drink named the “sidecar” and the fact that Bisquick was born on a train dining car…. these sweet delights are aptly named.

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Here we have another recipe installment for the 1931 themed upcoming birthday celebration for my dad…

Although the television was already invented by 1931, regular commercial network television programming did not begin in the U.S. until 1948.  And it was many more years until it was commonplace for families to own a black and white television.  So it is not so much the television, but black and white photos that these pizzettas are meant to represent from the year 1931.

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Here is another of the recipes, along with a little history, that will be on the menu of my dad’s 80th birthday party.  You can use standard (big) size croissants or cocktail (mini) size, depending upon the occasion you plan to serve these delicious and classic sandwiches.

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These darling green tartlets are perfect for St. Patrick’s Day but they will soon be serving another purpose for me.

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I’ve been holding out on you, and I do not mean with those special Raincoast crackers. I mean about informing you about reaching my goal. Exactly 2 weeks ago, on November 29th, I asked  you to help me reach my goal of 1,027 comments, by the end of the year. You have done it, and we reached that goal several days ago. The current number of comments for this blog is 1,044!

Thank you so much for all the kind words, it means so very much to me. Plus those comments help make me feel a little less sickened by how many spam comments come in every single day. Yes, blogs get a ton of spam. I have a spam blocker, and since the end of June, it has blocked 2,832 comments of spam! That is an average of 17 per day. That’s more “real” comments then I get in an entire week! So Annoying (and usually of disgusting nature too!) But enough of that, what I really want to say is Thank You All!

The other things that I used to find annoying were deviled eggs and meatballs. I know, that sounds strange, but when you hear this little tale, you will see why.

I am in the beginning stages of planning an 80th birthday party for my dad. That brings up memories of the 70th birthday party I threw for him. I worked for months; planning the menu, decor, invites, etc. Of course, the food was all “gourmet” and took days to prepare. My gorgeous sister, Sloane, worked long hours but wanted to make something to help. She asked, “Well, could I at least bring some deviled eggs?” I happily replied, “Sure, that would be great!”

She arrived hours early to help set up. The food was all laid out on the buffets; the guests arrived, they greeted the birthday boy, chatted, and began to eat. Within minutes, and I do mean just a few minutes, all the deviled eggs were gone, while the loads of gourmet food looked untouched! What the heck is it with deviled eggs? Although we didn’t serve meatballs at that particular party, the same thing happens with them! I honestly just don’t get it. But I will tell you one thing for sure, we will have several dozen deviled eggs and hundreds of meatballs at our dad’s birthday party in April, and these are the meatballs I will be serving! [Read more →]

You know that saying, right? It means you measure any wood you are working with twice to make absolutely sure that your measurement is correct because you only get the one chance to cut it right. That is how I feel about greasing a pan when baking. I am not a huge fan of baking or making desserts. Too many things can go wrong, at least for me they seem to. So the one thing I try to get right is to get the dessert out of the pan in one piece.  Easier than it sounds, unless you use parchment paper. Whenever I make a cake or quick breads, I always (even when I forget to put it in down on a recipe) grease the pan, line the bottom of the pan with parchment, and then grease the parchment. Works every time, as you’ll see in the pictures below.

I’ll be on Channel 12 NBC Valley Dish live today at 3:30, making a wonderful winter salad, in case you want to watch. I’ll post a link to the taped show along with the salad recipe tomorrow. AND… a very happy birthday to my sweet Jennifer! I adore you! xoxo

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Did you know that 23 is a prime number, meaning that is is a natural number that has exactly two distinct natural number divisors: 1 and itself?  There are 25 prime numbers between 1 and 100. They are: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67, 71, 73, 79, 83, 89 and 97. And strangely enough the current ages of three out of the four people in our family are prime – weird! Dave is 53, Connor is 19, and…. TODAY, Marissa is 23!

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Before I get to today’s recipe I want to send out birthday wishes to a very special woman in my life. Happy Birthday to my mother-in-law, Pat Hopkins, in Rockton, Illinois. Happily, all four of us flew to Illinois last weekend and spent fun times with Mom at Katie and Eddie’s wedding. Happy Birthday, Mom, we’re looking forward to your visit in February. I love you! xoox

What in the world would posses a person to even think of making homemade marshmallows? What or who could make me consider doing it? Tram Mai, that’s who! Tram called a couple weeks ago and asked if I’d like to do a story for Valley Dish about a S’Mores Party. Sure, sounds fun – gourmet S’mores – a party – cool entertaining idea- I’m all in! Immediately I start thinking of all the wonderful alternatives to plain old milk chocolate squares and graham crackers. How to really “kick it up a notch”, as Emeril would say. The filling alternatives are the easy part, then I wonder how to do something different with the real star of the show – the marshmallow. OK, honestly, I have made homemade marshmallows once before; in a cooking class with my summer children’s series, years ago. But those were still plain vanilla marshmallows, I needed something more than that. So I did my usual research – meaning, I “google” it – and found a chocolate flavored marshmallow recipe. Cool! So the chocolate marshmallow recipe provided here is adapted from HERE. Then I went a step further and decided that we needed a third flavor, so I created up a raspberry version too. (that recipe is just below the chocolate version… so keep scrolling). Tomorrow I will post all the gourmet S’mores recipes I created and pictures from our shoot with the entire pretty spread. I’ll let you know when the clip will air on the Valley Dish so you can watch, I think it’s going to be pretty darn great!

Before you scroll down to the actual recipe, let me preface it by saying, “Please don’t be intimidated by the massive length of the recipe!” There are only 9 ingredients… and one is water; some of the others are non-intimidating salt, vanilla, sugar, etc. It’s just a bunch of really long descriptions, explanations, and directions, plus more than a dozen photos to help you visualize it all. The process itself is not hard! Really! Read through the whole thing and you’ll see what I mean. Because now that I’ve made and tasted and drooled over these homemade marshmallows, I am wondering what took me so long to make homemade marshmallows again. Seriously!

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