Brainstorming Dinner Party Decor

Posted on February 26, 2010 by admin_admin

My dad will be visiting next week to do press for his new book, Payback Time, which is coming out March 2 (click here to pre-order on Amazon – sorry to plug it, but I’m excited!).

We’re going to have some wonderful family friends over for dinner, and I’m brainstorming my table design. I’m not really sure what I want, exactly. I don’t want it to look girly, but I do want it to look pretty, and I feel in the mood to spice up the table with a print by wrapping vases.

Snippet and Ink

Like these vases, I’m almost feeling a simple and elegant black and white theme, on a white tablecloth with fluffy white flowers and black placecards. It’s a sophisticated color scheme and it won’t compete with the food. A little cold, though?

I have lovely ice blue- and pewter-colored placemats that go really well with my dark wood dining table. I could design around them, with silver candlesticks and maybe chocolate or bronze wrapping on the vases, fluffy white flowers, white napkins with chocolate placecards tucked into them. It would be a color scheme similar to this inspiration board, though less embellished wedding and more birds nest with blue eggs and white accents.

Snippet and Ink

I love that lightish bronze color of the birds nest.

I’m going to see what wrapping paper is on offer at the paper store and go from there . . .

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Boeuf Bourguignon, or, The True Tale of How I Ate Cow: Part II

Posted on January 22, 2010 by admin_admin

Am I the only one who feels inundated by Julia Child to the point where I’m taking it as a sign? Seriously, a friend sent me My Life in France to read over Christmas, I brought it with me to read on the plane, tucked it in my little seat pocket to start after the movie, and what was the movie on the plane? Julie & Julia. It was definitely a sign. Not inundated in a bad way, just in the kind of way where I feel like there’s a message trying to get through to me that I should follow her to Paris, go to cooking school, and scientifically produce French recipes for American cooks. Have you read My Life in France? It’s great.

JUlia child

So for a Christmas present for someone very hard to buy for (aren’t all men?) I made Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon, which is beef simmered with vegetables, onions and garlic in red wine and beef broth for several hours. As I explained yesterday, it was a huge deal for me to not only eat beef, but to cook it, and I had no idea what I was doing in the least. I was so busy trying to follow her directions to the letter that I completely neglected to take pictures, which is perhaps not so especially terrible because during the whole five and a half hour cooking process I kept laughing about how utterly useless my experience would be to anyone who knows anything about about cookery.

And here’s the thing – I feel sacrilegious writing this – the boeuf came out DRY. Like, it wasn’t that good. Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon wasn’t that good. It wasn’t bad, it just didn’t taste anything like the brilliance that was the Spotted Pig’s bone marrow-covered steak and it was really pretty dry.

Obviously totally my fault. I have no idea how meat that simmered in red wine and broth for three hours came out dry, but it did. So, feeling badly about myself, I have to admit I did a little googling and none other than Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa herself, made Boeuf Bourguignon that came out dry too! Here’s her quote:

“I never really liked boeuf bourguignon. After cooking for three hours, the meat was stringy and dry and the vegetables were overcooked.”

Exactly how mine came out! So she ignored Julia and created her own recipe. If I ever make beef again, I’ll try her version and report, but don’t hold your breath. I think I’ve officially overdosed on beef. We drank a lot of really good wine and the mini dinner party turned out lovely as a whole, but the dish was just so brown and so heavy and so brown that it kind of grossed me out. Beef isn’t very good for me anyway, right? So I’m back to my semi-veggie/pescatarian ways but still with total obeisance to Julia for her genius, which has not been marred at all by my failure. I’m sure Julia’s boeuf never came out dry, and maybe I need to go to Paris to find out how.

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Art of Après-Ski

Posted on January 15, 2010 by admin_admin

I’m still in Jackson Hole for meetings – back to New York next week. But wouldn’t it be great if the ski hill looked like this (with me on it)?

www.powdertravel.com/ ski_st_anton.htm

It doesn’t. Our poor mountain is a sheet of ice with only little taunts of an inch or two here and there to pretend like the snow gods have remembered us. A friend said to me he thinks we need the kind of snow that will shut the entire mountain down for a day or two just to get back to where we should be in the middle of January.

Soooo….we’ve been driven to focusing on what some consider the real point of a ski vacation anyway: the fun afterwards. It’s not such a bad thing to start the apres-ski revelry at lunchtime instead of when the lifts close! So here is my recipe for a good apres-ski party:

hot tub (optional)
a gorgeous view
locally brewed beer
really good tequila for shots between beers
jam band and/or bluegrass tunes
a guy who calls people “brah” and brags about hucking it off a sick lip into the gnar
an expert skier who won’t talk about the crazy things he’s done unless you ask
extreme skiing/snowboarding videos on the tv
a big fire in the fireplace
comfortable shoes
a ride home

Mix. Repeat.

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Lucky Meal for the New Year Dinner Party

Posted on January 5, 2010 by admin_admin

Happy New Year!

I have a strong feeling this is going to be a good year. I feel it. I wish the best for each of you with a fresh start and renewed energy, and I look forward to sharing many gorgeous and yummy things with all of you here in the next year.

www.goodhousekeeping.com

Epicurous has a lovely description of lucky foods from around the wo rld to usher in a most lucky 2010 – and Nancy, my step-grandma, cooked the Southern ones here: collard greens for lots of greenbacks and black-eyed peas for pocket change, she said! I took hasty photos with my iphone and then lost it the next day in I’m not sure which snowboarding tumble in roughly three feet of heavy powder. So no photos from me, and I have to go buy a new phone today.

I’m a midwesterner – now New Yorker – and have absolutely no instincts in my blood for real down home cooking, so it’s all new to me. When Nancy made these dishes last year, I found out that traditionally you cook collard greens with ham hock! I never knew there were dishes with meat in them that didn’t specify that there was, in fact, meat in them. My poor little non-ham-eating heart was shocked. So she substituted chicken broth for the ham for my sister and I and it may not have been strictly traditional, but it was damn good. This year, she actually started three days before, when she cooked the collard greens and then set them in a ziploc bag in the garage to keep cool and steep. Two days before, she put the black-eyed peas in a huge bowl of water to soak, and then the day of she made grits. You could make them with veggie broth just as well, for a nice vegetarian meal.

You could make this lucky New Years meal anytime during the year – nothing wrong with a little luck in April or August, presented with full New Years flair of gold and silver all over the place. Anytime you need a fresh start and a little favor with the gods, it would make a great dinner party and would be so happily different from the usual holidays at the usual times. Give everyone New Years hats and noisemakers, and celebrate each person’s rebirth in whatever way they want! It could be a lovely addition to a happiness group or to cheer someone up.

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Brunch and Pub Crawling on Vacation

Posted on December 31, 2009 by admin_admin

Things happen later when you’re on vacation. Like brunch that my sister and her boyfriend meant to start 11:30am yesterday actually started at 1:30pm. No matter – I’m a lover of breakfast foods any time of the day. Pancakes, scrambled eggs, fruit salad and turkey sausage taste just as amazing after noon.

I threw together my mom’s various placemats and accoutrements – it’s fun setting the table with someone else’s stuff; like I got to go shopping and come up with all new color schemes. Ridiculous things such as this make me happy ;)

Anita, our octogenarian dog, wore her Christmas sweater – which seriously has the ugliest color scheme, like whoever knitted it just used all the leftover yarn and threw it together in a haphazard pattern. But they were being sold to support the humane society and was the last one left, so what can you do. Plus, she is a dog. She doesn’t care.

And the food was classic.

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We got going late because the night before we inaugurated the first annual Griswold Family Christmas Vacation Pub Crawl, themed after the paradigmatic movie National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, which is possibly the funniest Christmas movie ever made.

Xmasvac

There were two standout costumes that deserve publicity:

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Christmas Eve Family Dinner Party

Posted on December 23, 2009 by admin_admin

Well, things have been a little rough around here with the passing of my grandma, who was my mom’s only immediate family besides my sister and I. I’ve been writing pages and pages about her very interesting life and want to condense it into something readable, but am finding it difficult – hopefully will manage it soon just to make myself feel like it’s finished and I can stop writing every detail before I forget. And I tweaked my back last week on my way to California for the funeral, so I’m right now sitting up very straight with a hefty pillow behind me. My mom is convinced that your back’s health is a metaphor (or simile?) for how supported you are in your life, so I guess according to her I’m not supported enough – though I feel like that’s a big world of excuses just begging you to come in, and really I just picked up my suitcase wrong when getting on the plane last week. I have lots to do for Christmas that doesn’t involve lifting or twisting; there is no snow here anyway, so I don’t feel badly about not being able to snowboard for another week or so; I have a massage therapist who is incredibly good at inflicting a lot of pain on me; and with family and friends all descending on Jackson Hole for the holidays everything is really just fine. This is even my view while I write, looking south into the valley and over the Snake River:

Plus, I’m completely obsessed with Christmas in general and love love love this time of year! Lights everywhere, merry people, and presents galore for all the good little girls and boys – and everyone I love was very good this year ;)

I’m trying to come up with my Christmas Eve menu. We always have fried oysters for Christmas Eve; I don’t know why, yes it is a strange tradition, and I think it just originated because my mom likes fried oysters and who goes to the trouble of such a thing on non-holidays?!

Coconut & Lime

So it has to be centered on the oysters, and I really want to make brussel sprouts just because they’re in season and I’m completely obsessed with them right now, plus they’re also, like the oysters, a little different and fun. But what else? Oysters and brussel sprouts do not a meal make.

A nice simple potato would be quiet enough to meld with the strong oyster flavor and also go well with a nice aioli sauce for the oysters. I like this plan: oysters, new potatoes, and brussel sprouts (please continue for the recipe) for the meal. Something like poached pears for dessert, because my mom has to have her fruity desserts, and I think no appetizers because we’re all going to be crammed into the kitchen cooking and frying until everything is hot and ready to be devoured. Patience is not a virtue in my family when there is hot food waiting to be eaten.

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Sweet Home Dinner

Posted on November 22, 2009 by admin_admin

It was gorgeous and a wonderful evening. Alexis was down from Connecticut for the day and stopped by to stay hi while I was stringing the flowers for the ceiling. Of course I invited her to stay for dinner, and she was such a wonderful addition to our party – and got to hear lots of stories about Fairfield (where we all grew up) that either scared or intrigued her! Ha!

It’s an artistic group, so it was really fun to create a colorful table with bouquets of color pencils over brown craft paper that begged to be drawn on. I used it as the easiest place cards ever – just wrote everyone’s names above their plates.

The flowers were simple, but added a punch of color. I bought four bunches of carnations in yellow and three shades of pink, and kept each color in its own vase rather than mixing them. It made the flowers look cohesive and at the same time, with the colored pencils, made the table as a whole very colorful.

I then strung blossoms on three long strands of thread and hung them from the ceiling for something more festive and with a little bit of South Asian flair.

We made gorgeous doodles.

mosaicc029a8a12365810ee7ba98c79040ae60c68648d2 And the food…Anna brought her gorgeous macaroons made with organic sweetened condensed milk, but I was so consumed with eating them that I completely forgot to take a photograph. Just imagine perfectly browned, chewy golden macaroons, and you’ll have a good sense of how lovely they were. Please continue for the post-mortem on my dishes.