Flavors 518

Its hard to believe, I have been having salad bar parties for five years! Here's the link back to the post of the first one . You can see my punch was a bit more attractive for that party. The idea is everyone brings an ingredient to add to the salad bar, and then everyone can go down the line and even make several very different salads. It ends up feeling interactive and community building, I think. This is a tradition I've been really happy to keep going because I feel like it was a really great idea to start off with. It doesn't require much cooking which is great for summer months, sometimes people have extra produce in the summer from their gardens or CSA memberships, and its really healthy and refreshing so it just feels perfect for this time of year. I thought I'd break it down how this year went. Alright, so first on this punch... uh what can I say, everyone thought it was like a science experiment. Started out with Joy the Baker's Lavender Lemonade ...

I sometimes have ridiculous ideas that I talk about doing forever and sometimes they actually make their way into reality. I totally think my friend Sandy is a genius, a butter and sugar genius that is - which is of course the best kind. She has a business called Chaos and Buttercream , where she manages to make cakes that are delicious, creative, and beautiful. Ever since I bought my bear cake pan, Sandy and I have said "Do you know what would be awesome? If we made a whole army of bear cakes and invited everyone we knew to decorate them!" Who knew we would actually do it! I'll also mention that I am going to the Bear's Steakhouse for my birthday in a couple weeks, so this is all a way of building bear related excitement for me. Here are the bare bears starting out: What was awesome about it was how different everyone's was from each other and how creative everyone was. This is mine: Hello Kitty bear: psychedelic bear: coy bear: gen...

I've long wanted to have a fancy brunch party. We've got a lot of cookbooks, and I read about things that sounds fabulous and laborious like stratas, frittatas, and quiches. Are you really going to wake up on the weekend and start rolling out a pie crust? No, no you are not. I have made in the past mushroom ricotta crepes , cinnamon buns with buttermilk icing , and the first thing I ever cooked on my own from scratch was a goat cheese and leek quiche . Well, we all know the best thing to motivate you to cook fancy things is to invite other people over, and what is more fun than a fancy brunch? Here's someone who likes the idea as much as I do . Martha Stewart also has some ideas , and I love them all. My friend Katie and her boyfriend came over, and I set up a spread of things that could easily be made ahead of time. I don't think having people over for brunch would work as well if you were off flipping pancakes and folding omelets while your friend is talking abou...

I got the idea for a salad bar party a while ago from a podcast on homefries.com . I absolutely love these guys on The Table Set , who also suggested a "Bring Your Own Pizza Topping Party". You could also do a "Bring Your Own Omelet Filling Brunch Party". When I was dogsitting for my coworker back in the winter, I read something in the Red Hat Society Cookbook ( which I made fun of quite a bit ) where you could have a boiling pot of water going, have everyone choose which omelet fillings they wanted, then you put the eggs and the fillings in zip-lock bags, write their names in marker on the outside of the bags, shake them around a bit, and throw them in the pot of boiling water. I'm not sure if that omelet technique would work or not, but I thought the salad bar party concept worked out great. You would never buy all of those separate toppings, so making it a group thing is a way to make it way more feasible. Plus, it is summer and who wants to turn the oven on...

This post has a soundtrack . Now, of course I think it is fun and totally healthy for couples to socialize with other couples. But if you don't think it is neccessary, and also totally healthy for people to also have separate friendships, then you should go read some Rachel Bertsche . It just kills me when I hear people say they force their husbands to go outlet shopping with them - that is why you are supposed to have girlfriends - girlfriends who would love to go outlet shopping! Instead, you see the guys sitting outside the dressing room, totally bored to tears.When I hear someone say their boyfriend is their best friend, and then totally demonstrate that they don't think their friendships are a priority through their behavior, it kills me, but I also think it is not good for their relationship in the long term. Your boyfriend does not want to go shoe shopping with you, and he really doesn't want to analyze "Real Housewives of Any City". Rachel Bertsche s...

I thought that our New Year's Eve party turned out to be a fabulous time, if I may say so myself. I have a few tips that I can share. As with all entertaining (especially events where alcohol is involved), I think it is important to have lots of water available to drink. People may not think to ask for it, but they are likely to drink it if it is there, and they should drink it.  There is some formula that can probably be worked out in terms of the cost of buying disposable items, and the labor involved in cleaning up items you already own. I think paper plates and plastic cups fit into the first category, but actually that silverware falls into the second category. There are attractive disposable options for forks, but they get up to the price point where it is not worth it. The ones that cost $2 (at Party City ) look cheap. We have a whole bunch of old forks in a box in the basement so I brought those up to use. Normally, I try really hard to serve only finger foods, bu...

My memories growing up of New Year's Eve were usually spent at home watching Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve, drinking sparkling cider, and always eating some kind of cheeseball and crackers, which was our idea of "appetizers" and seemed fancy. The only way this could possibly be considered fancy could be that we had several different kinds of crackers, but to an 8 year old it seemed fancy. There were some times I remember being babysat at my grandparents house and my parents coming back late with my grandma who was always wearing something impossibly sparkly and some silly hat. I think when I was about 12 years old I imagined growing up and attending a long string of fancy holiday parties. I think I even bought a velvet dress and leather skirt for the day when these fancy parties would come into reality. Little did my 12 year old self know that grown ups typically go to office parties which are attended in a white button up shirt and black pencil skirt, family parties w...

So this picture above was taken in January 2009 about two weeks before my grandmother died. It is better than the one that was taken one minute before, but it is totally not in focus. The nurse was far from a good photographer. What a tragedy it is when photographs of moments in your life that will never be repeated are all blurry! We have a great one on our honeymoon that has this same problem. Very tragic. Anyways, so we visited her in Kalamazoo, MI at a nursing home. I was living in NYC working at the Morgan at the time. My grandmother was very concerned as to whether it was a paid job or just an unpaid internship. I was very concerned about getting her pecan pie recipe. She said "Everyone knows how to make that", and wouldn't give it to me but kept asking me how much I got paid. I never got the recipe, and then I married someone who is allergic to nuts. So no pecan pie for me. But this morning I was buying an espresso at the coffee shop in town ( because K cups ...

I already talked about some ideas I've had for Thanksgiving . I've also already said I am not hosting this year. But that doesn't have to stop me from coming up with menu ideas for other people (after all, planning the menu is half the fun). And decorating too, of course . brie in phyllo dates with goat cheese and bacon festive fig cocktail Root Vegetable Pot Pie with Cheddar Biscuit Crust (sounds like a good vegetarian option). Awesome looking fried apple things   desserts that look like turkeys pumpkin macarons And remember to take a moment to say what you are thankful for .  Last year I think I said I was thankful for my job, and the cheese we had, which came off as cold-hearted maybe because the 5 year old who followed right after me was thankful for a brother to play with. Of course I am thankful for all the fabulous people in my life. But after hearing day after day on the news about how difficult it has been for so many people in terms of economic conditi...

I'm having a couple friends over for dinner on Friday. It is no big deal. In fact, Marguerita Pizza is one of the absolute cheapest foods you can make even if you buy really great fresh mozzarella. I use the Cook's Illustrated recipe, and it works great . Sometimes you want to push yourself and cook something really ambitious, but sometimes you just want to have a couple friends over to keep you company, and it should be very casual. I have though seen some very fun ways to enhance the adult pizza party experience. Martha Stewart a while ago had a tip about using store bought pies, and letting people add their own ingredients. This blog (Celebrations at Home) makes it look really cool. Here's some other tips: at 20Something Cupcakes blog , The HipHostess , and the kitchn . Sometimes parties aren't about the fuss. Especially if you get your friends to bring the salad. I'm thinking about making Dorie Greenspan's chocolate mousse. But if not, it is no...

When I was a kid I felt overwhelmed by Thanksgiving. It just always seemed like so much food that we'd end up feeling sick at the end of it. When I was in college and learning about people starving all over the world, a holiday just devoted to eating seemed a bit like flaunting our wealth in the faces of the less fortunate of the world. Like many things in life, sometimes it takes being able to do something out of free will instead of obligation for you to appreciate it. I did enjoy the green bean casserole:  (A Midwestern classic: can of green beans, can of cream of mushroom soup mixed together , french fried onions on top, put in the oven for a while.) This blog shows someone attempting the kind of holiday meal I remember as a kid here and here . This post has some great retro Thanksgiving photos (like the one I featured above).  In the past few years I've had different ideas about how to approach it. Our first Thanksgiving we did actually make an enormous am...

I went to a clothes swap party last night, and it was really fun. The food was great, and it didn't seem like it had taken a lot of effort on the part of the hostess (whether it did or not, I don't know, but it is good for it to seem that way). It made me think that for a party to be successful it is both simpler than it seems and more difficult than you would think to strike a certain balance. Here are some important things, I think: Music: It is good to have something set the mood without inhibiting conversation. It's good to have something off the beaten path a bit to show the host's personality, but not so much that no one recognizes it, because the guests recognizing the music can lead to good conversations. Last night's party had some Richard Thompson, and I thought that worked great. If the party ends up switching from wine to bourbon, often things work their way in for irony's sake ("California Girls", "Umbrella"), but we at least...