Never Ever Ever Ever Ever

... miss lunch at Rachel's House if you're invited!  

I'm pretty certain I don't even need to add words to this page to prove why you should never ever ever miss an invitation to lunch at my friend Rachel's house.  Honestly, she puts on the most beautiful spread at every occasion. This luncheon was for our dear friend Alice who was celebrating her 80th birthday!   I'm after Rachel to start a blog about her lunch and dinner parties and then turn it all into a book ... you can see why:

Hostess gift, birthday gift and party favours.

I make it a habit to never ever arrive to a lunch or dinner engagement without a hostess gift of some sort. I like to bring flowers, and while Martha Stewart frowns upon bringing fresh cut flowers sans vessel to a dinner party where the host may be too busy to source a vase and put the flowers out, I say poo poo to you Martha! My friends have got it all going on and can handle such a little aside.

Party Favour

The theme was Alice's Blue Dress so I bought Blue Belle and Iris bulbs then attached a note about friendship and some of the lavender from my garden

Rachel explaining the dishes to Doris

NOM NOM NOM

Asparagus with chopped egg

Quinoa salad made by our Kadra

Blue

My plate piled high!

Asparagus, quinoa salad and chilled lemon trout over baby greens...

Iced tea - a southern staple

Local cantaloupe and strawberries thank you Doris!

Tractor Cake ....

This year's birthday party theme was John Deere so it called for a TRACTOR CAKE. 

I surfed the Internet for cake inspiration and then settled on this basic concept for a cake. 

9X11 cake pan

I made a cup cake for the front tire and a small corning wear  dish was used for the back tire.

Place the tires on the cake and cut out the cake where the tires will fit.

Then use the left over cake to make the seat & exhaust.

Then ice it!

 What does the 533/ 12 stand for?   The kids birthday ages and the year!  Gavin turned 5 and Noah & Finley were 3.  The kids were all born a few days apart so my sister in law throws one party for all three kids. It's a blast!   Come back soon to see pics from the John Deere Themed Party!

My Food Photography

This is the ad Polly's Perfections ran in the February issue of Washington Magazine.  I am friends with the owners and had photographed a lot of chocolate for their catalogue and to hang in the store.  Photographing chocolate has it's perks!

Cool & Delicious

Soup

My kid likes soup. No, let me rephrase that. My kid LOVES soup. Every - day I ask her what she would like for lunch or dinner and she will excitedly say SOUP! Finley and I were invited to lunch just before Christmas at my friend Kadra's house. Kadra had made a delicious butternut squash soup from scratch. Fin was mad for it. She drank up three little recyclable paper Dixie Cups full and then ate some from my bowl of too. Kadra was tickled. I have been using the little paper Dixie cups to serve Finley soup as she could manage a cup but was having a little trouble with soup on a spoon. She has since developed the skill especially with thicker soups, but, the little cups worked so well early on. I carried them in my diaper bag along with Fin's reusable cutlery, plate and bowl.

For Christmas Kadra made Finley her very own batch of butternut squash soup. How's that for spoiled and a most welcomed gift! I froze some servings for Fin to enjoy at a later date and Finley devoured the rest.

I asked Fin to share with me ... yeah right.

Since Finley, at 22 months, at time when kids become really picky eaters, is really into eating soup, I decided to try my hand at making some home made soups too. I have really gotten into it trying my hand at all different kinds of soups. Of course they are all vegetable based, as I'm a vegetarian. A hearty soup makes for a fully satisfying meal.

I made a really delicious roasted winter vegetable soup. The recipe came from a vegetarian recipe book I've had for years and more recently I made a green lentil soup. This recipe I found on-line or I consult my favorite recipe books; Joy Of Cooking, Jamie Oliver and Cooks.com. So yummy!

Some of the raw ingredients for the Lentil Soup.

Less than an hour later the final product.

Finley getting into her Lentil Soup for dinner.

Do you have any awsome soup resipes you'd like to share?

Post them in my comments. I would LOVE to try them out!

Garden

Since moving to the south - I cannot - grow a thing. I used to have an amazing garden. I used to grow all the ingredients to make tomato sauce and salsa and loved the whole canning process. I used to grow gorgeous cutting flowers and fill my house up with bouquets....but that was when I lived in Ontario. Now I raid other people's gardens!

Our friends planted a wonderful garden and then left for Europe for a month - we were invited to pick what we wanted while they were away. Dad, Fin and I had a good morning poking through the gardens picking a few veggies for our dinner.

Dad is checking out the herbs.

Dad and Finley with the eggplant and yellow squash.

A few of our pickings.

A teeny tiny tomato!

Finley was particularly good at picking the tomatoes.

She worked at it for a while. Her attention span astounds me sometimes!

Sundaes on Thursdays = DELICIOUS!

Finley was invited to her first "party." It was a sundae party. The host was turning four and had never had a sundae before. It was so cool to be a part of another child's first along with Fin's.

A child's delight at experiencing anything for the first time supersedes anything I've ever experienced.

Finley has never had chocolate ice cream.

She has never had a sundae.

She has never had sprinkles and chocolate syrup.

She didn't miss a spoon full.

She also didn't take a NAP and went to bed at 6:20 pm.

Would I take her to another sundae party?

Hells Yeah!

P.S There were other children at the party

but I have not asked permission to put their faces on the inter web.

WARNING This Post WILL Induce Hunger

Dining OUT in Costa Rica

Steve and I have been travelling to COSTA RICA together since 2001. As we set out on our first trip we read several books about Costa Rica learning about culture, industry and food. The Lonely Planet and Foder's travels guides were among those books we bought and read cover to cover. We also spoke to many people who had either wintered in Costa Rica or been surf bums there in the late 80's early 90's. Every one told us the food was bland.

A day or so into our first trip Steve and I were beginning to wonder what the discussion of bland food was about? We ate local dishes. Casados is the Costa Rican name for a plate of the day. You get the fresh catch or chicken and salad, beans, rice, and fried plantain and sometimes some young cheese. All ingredients are fresh and delicious. Nothing in our opinion is bland.

We are currently living in eastern NC where we rarely go out to eat. I'm positive in the bigger city of Raleigh there are excellent restaurants but in our area not so much. Yes, we are food snobs. Having come from a city like Toronto where we can get every type of cuisine under the sun where competition is fierce so food quality rock - it's hard to come to this area to eat out. I'm not saying southern fried is not good, it is , it's just other specialties done well are lacking here. So we elect to stay home and cook. While the restaurant experience is disappointing the shopping is not. We have a Saturday morning farmer's market we can shop for organic produce and a fish co-op within walking distance.

On this trip to Costa Rica we were very excited to dine out for two reasons:

1. We have not dined out in ages - especially long leisurely dinners since becoming parents. Family is so respected in Costa Rica and the wait staff is all over the children. Children are welcomed to dinner at any hour of the evening.

2. The food as we have come to know it is AMAZING!

Casado from Harbour Reef

Finley & Steve sharing a Casado at Soda Melyssa

Shrimp & Avocado salad from Lagarta Lodge

Finley & Steve sharing the same expression and a chicken burrito at Kaya Sol

Shrimp in Gorgonzola Sauce at Casa Tucan

Papas Fritas at The Guilded Iguana

The Priest Family eating at a Soda which is a typical outdoor Costa Rican Restaurant.

The cokes are served cold in glass bottles and are made with sugar cane ... so yummy!

Pargo Rojo or as we know it Red Snapper from Casa Tucan

Snook in salsa verde aka basil pesto from Guilded Iguana

Molly chowing down on a margherita pizza at Giardino Topical

(yes that is my PILSEN in the foreground!)

Pecan Pie

As I have previously mentioned we have pecan trees. We have been collecting like mad and when my Dad arrived from Ontario he got down to the business of shelling pecans. We have this neat tool for cracking pecans which keeps them mostly intact. It does take some skill and effort but the incentive is there. The ladies who sold us the house left the pecan sheller as a gift. Nice EH?

Pecan sheller & the cutting board hubby just made is in the background.

HOME MADE PECAN PIE. We used the recipe from the Joy of Cooking which is my favorite and always go-to cook book. Neither Dad or I had made a pecan pie before so it was an entirely new undertaking.

We roasted the pecans before chopping them to add to the sugar and sugar.

The sugar set up and my Dad added whole pecans to the top to decorate.

This is my cutie Dad adding pecans to the pie before we baked it.

We had enough filling to make a pie and 8 tarts and then some.

With the left over crusts dad made an old family recipe. It's a French Canadian treat called Pete Des Soeurs. Translated: Nuns Farts. Cinnamon & sugar rolled into the crust. These were for Finley since she can't have nuts yet.

DELICIOUS! We are making more pies today to send home to Canada and to freeze for Christmas!