RE-invented style: RE-cipe sharing

A NIGHT TO REMEMBER. I belong to a ladies book club and for Christmas, we normally invite our husbands to join us for a dinner party. This last December, my friend, Renae, generously offered to host us all TWENTY OF US at her house. While we always have a great time when we get together, this evening was especially AMAZING. Renae truly went above and beyond to make a memorable night for us. At one point, my friend Martha's husband turned to me and said "Wow! This is really good. This is such a grown up evening." I replied we were all very lucky because Renae is an excellent cook and a generous hostess. Renae rented tables and outdoor heaters and hung giant lights in the form of stars over the table from her trees. The star lights made a great atmosphere, but the low lighting made it hard for me as an inexperienced photographer to capture the whole feeling of the setting. Hopefully I can still share with you some of the magic of the night.

SIMPLE AND ELEGANT. Renae placed a large floral arrangement on her dining room table which she also cleared to allow the rest of us space to set out our contributions to the dinner party.

ORNAMENTS HUNG WITH CARE. Renae travels to her hometown for the holidays so she keeps her holiday decorations selective. She hung a garland and ribbons on her stairwell and glittery ornaments with pretty ribbon from her curtain rods. I am totally stealing this idea for my house next Christmas.

MEAL MENU

Appetizers (cheese, dips, crackers, olives)

Tomato Bisque Soup

Chicken Pot Pie

Macaroni Au Gratin

Mixed Green Salad with Raspberry Vinaigrette

Chocolate Birthday Cake

Buche de Noel

Apple Pie a la mode

BRILLIANT APPETIZER DECORATING. Everyone loved this appetizer set up brought by our friend, Kathleen. She put 2 cheese-based dips and some olives in a dip bowl set. To make them more festive, she made a ribbon out of salmon for the top of the seafood dip and a green pepper christmas tree form for the spicy dip.

ANOTHER VIEW. My friend, Celeste, took the following photograph before I arrived to capture Kathleen's adorable set up before hungry husbands dug in and diminished the effect.

CHEESE LOVERS. All the members of my book club like cheese so we rarely gather without a cheese plate of some kind. For this party, we had a chevre cheese covered in a sweet cranberry sauce.

A LA TABLE. Renae called us all outside for dinner. Our friends, Martha & Celeste, contributed a wonderful tomato soup to start off our meal. They bought the soup from a chef friend of Celeste, however, I happen to have a tomato soup recipe I like to make at home for an easy dinner which I am sharing here:

EASY CRAB TOMATO SOUP

1 cup parmesan cheese

1 cup low fat milk

1 cup half and half or heavy cream

1 generous pat of real butter

1 can of tomatoes

1 package of imitation crab meat or 1 can of real crab

dash of pepper and salt

Combine in sauce pan and heat on medium. Serves 3-4. I like that if I buy crab, I will likely have everything else already at home to make this soup. A very simple dinner.

Warm soup felt so good because of the chill in the air. A great welcome to the table.

SOUP BEFORE SALAD. Because it was a chilly night, Renae urged us to the table to eat the warm soup. Please take note of the green mixed salad above. I was going to edit the picture to show the salad, but decided against it. Everyone already knows what a mixed green salad looks like, right?

LA PIECE DE RESISTANCE. INDIVIDUAL CHICKEN POT PIES. It was right after digging in for his first spoonful of this little piece of heaven, that Martha's husband exclaimed ""Wow! This is really good. " I am sure Renae got everything organic and from the Farmer's Market. I asked Renae for her chicken pot pie recipe and she told me she used Ina Gartens' recipe. You can read the 5 stars out of 5 recipe (it deserves 6!) on Foodnetwork.com's website HERE

BUCHE NOEL. My friend Celeste's husband, Martin, was very excited that I brought a buche de noel or yule log cake to the party for dessert. I bought it from a bakery (sorry no recipe.) Martin announced to other people at the party that I had brought a yule log and my friend, Celeste, said "Eldarose brought a U-haul?" LOL. Martin explained what a yule log is and then Celeste laughed over her blunder and referenced it in jokes all night. There was another misunderstanding/mishearing later in the evening but that one is more R-rated than is appropriate for the blog. ; )

My friend Linda brought a chocolate cake for her husband, AJ, because it was his birthday. Linda makes great brownies and chocolate cake. She says her secret is to buy the box stuff, but to add in extra chocolate chips. It must work because her chocolate baked goods are out of this world. As for why she's holding the knife....um, we had wine with dinner? That's all I got to explain it.


HAPPY GUESTS. I took this pic as the pot pies were being served. We had a little dancing, silliness and the ladies had a flash mob practice session before the evening was over. At the end of the evening, Renae and I were talking in the kitchen and I complimented her and shared all the praises she got from our end of the long dinner table. Renae was very humble about it all. She was very touched that Walter, Martha's husband, had been impressed by her cooking because Martha is herself an excellent cook. Somehow, we got on the topic of having our husbands there and Renae remarked that we are a pretty lucky group because we all get along so well, without drama, and even our husbands are good guys. I agreed. Perhaps the blessing of our friendship was the most magical part of the evening.

WRITTEN BY ELDAROSE


You can see my Outdoor Dinner Party setting HERE

You can read see our post on Western Tables HERE

FIRST BIRTHDAY: For our daughter's 1st birthday we chose a Peter Rabbit theme. As a new parent, I wanted to make things easy on me but still cute for the guests so I ordered the cake from a local bakery. I think they did a great job decorating the cake. It was half carrot cake, half white cake.

HOW SWEET IT IS. Our daughter ate cake with her hands and took some cute pics and that is all I hoped for. The First Birthday party is more about adult guests since children that young cannot do much and will not even remember the party. Our entertainment was a bubble machine. That's it. I had a pinata for the older kids to hit, but the weather didn't cooperate. It rained the whole day so the pinata was saved for another time.

The Theme came about because I saw a Peter Rabbit party book in a book store. It had cut outs to tie to make a banner and make little party hats for the guests. I decided to use some of the cut outs to tie with ribbon and hang from the chandelier over our dining room table that would have the buffet for the party. I used other cut outs on the table. I also copied images online to make labels I put next to different dishes to claim them as part of a theme. For example, next to the veggie platter, I put a sign saying Vegetables from Mr. McGreggor's Garden. I couldn't find the book I originally used for this post, but Amazon does have a similar Peter Rabbit book. HERE

THE INVITE. This was the biggest project I did for the party. We took pictures of our daughter with a Peter Rabbit doll we bought and some veggies. Then I used the picture to make the birthday party invitations. My mom still had her party invitation saved so Reba scanned it for me to post. The scan wasn't done level and I know the picture is not the best quality but if you can tell that the invitation has a vellum overlay and it is cut out in the shape of the number "1" then that is all that matters. We also used our daughter's photo for her Madeline birthday invite, you can see HERE.

INVITATION CRAFT: To make the party invitations, you will need white card stock, vellum paper, scissors, a hole punch, a scanner, ribbon and white envelopes. First, I scanned in our daughter's portrait and printed out 2 images to a regular sheet of paper. I printed out sheets until I had enough to make all the invitations. Second, I free hand drew a large number "1" as you can see above. I experimented to both center it and make it large enough so the number captured all the good parts of the photo. When I did this, I then cut out the number to use as a template. Third, I typed all the party info in a word document and printed it out on vellum paper. Fourth, I used a sharpie and the template to draw 2 number "1" outlines on the vellum sheets over where the 2 photo images would be on the sheets I already printed. Fifth, I worked altering the text centering and printing it on that same vellum page with the outline until the text was centered within the outlined numbers I had drawn on it. Sixth, I printed out vellum sheets with the party info on them, drew the number "1" outlines and cut out them out. Seventh, I attached the two sheets, cutting them out based upon the outline of the number "1". Last, I punched a hole in the 2 sheets (vellum and the photo) and tied a blue ribbon on top. The process was a little bit of time and effort, but I got a lot of compliments on the invitation so it was worth it to me. There may be an easier way to do it using the computer to draw the outline before printing, but with my limited techno-knowledge, that was how I did it.

PARTY MENU

Vegetables from Mr. McGreggor's Garden (veggie tray with dips)
Mrs. Rabbit's Muffins & Breads (blueberry muffins & buns to make ham sandwiches)
Mopsy, Flopsy & Cottontail's berries (bowl of mixed berries)
Mrs. Rabbit's Ham (sliced ham with different mustards so people can make small sandwiches)

Mrs. Tittlemouse's cheese (platter with some gourmet cheese and sliced cheese for the sandwiches)
Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle's tea (iced)

If you notice, it is a cold menu. I didn't heat up anything to serve. I normally offer some hot dishes to guests, even when I want to keep things simple, but with a new baby, I put simplicity first. I found some carrots at the grocery store that were uncut with stems and placed a few on the table as decorations. I placed Beatrix Potter dolls which my friend, Jana, lent me, on doll chairs in the middle of the food table as a centerpiece.

BIG SMILES: My husband and daughter pose for a picture in front of the mantel in our old house. You can see that I used more of the large collection of Beatrix Potter dolls which my friend, Jana, lent me to set up a mantel display for the party. I also bought a lot of blue, light blue and white balloons and relied upon the large Peter Rabbit Pinata for a festive party setting. My parents gave us the pinata. They bought it from a man in our home town. They brought us one in the shape of the Eiffel Tower for our daughter's Madeline Birthday Party, too. Unfortunately, it rained all during the party so we couldn't use it. I had to save it for another time and my friend, Martha, suggested I use it for an Easter time playdate, which is what we did.

FINALLY BREAKING THE PINATA: My daughter is finally getting her chance to break open the pinata above. I hosted a party in March (several months after my daughter's birthday) for the specific purpose of finally using the Peter Rabbit pinata.

SPRING AFTERNOON SNACKS. I wanted to do something a bit fun for the Spring playdate so I set up my outdoor table with a nice, crisp white linen table cloth, used pink depression glass serving pieces I have and some Pottery Barn Easter Egg plates to set up a sweet table. The moss standing Rabbit is something I bought at a local gift store and decided to use as the table centerpiece.By this time, stores were selling plastic Easter eggs, so I bought some iridescent ones and just threw them around the table and the yard.

ANOTHER VIEW OF THE TABLE. I bought cupcakes, cookies, a fruit tart and pink French lemonade for the play date.

FRESH STRAWBERRIES,ROQUEFORT GRAPES AND FINGER CHICKEN SALAD SANDWICHES ON DISPLAY. I cut up strawberries and made chicken salad sandwiches and Roquetfort grapes. You can find a chicken salad recipe for the sandwiches HERE. The Roquefort grapes were for the moms. The kids wouldn't have liked them. I like how Roquefort grapes mix the sweet taste of the chilled grapes and the strong flavors of the cheese and nuts. If you have never tried them, I am sharing how to make them here.

ROQUEFORT GRAPES

1 package chopped walnuts
1 package light cream cheese 8 oz.
1/8 lb. Roquefort cheese
2 tablespoons heavy whipping cream
1 package red grapes (seedless)

Before opening up the walnut package, I usually hit it a few times to smush up the pieces even more. Then, I open the bag and put all the nuts in a bowl. Also, I set up a platter or plate nearby to place the finished grapes. Let the cream cheese and the Roquefort cheese become room temperature. You are going to combine them with the whipping cream, and the cream cheese blends more easily the longer it is out. You add in the cream to help the cheese become moist enough to coat the grapes. I normally just use a spoon to mix the cheese with the cream, but you could also use a food processor for this. Once you have mixed the cheeses and the whipping cream, then you will take a clean, dry grape and put it in your hands. You will grab some of the cheese mixture, too, and roll the grape into the cheese mixture until it is thoroughly coated. Then you will roll the cheese-covered grape in the bowl with the nuts to coat it. Placed the now nut coated grapes on the platter/plate you set up nearby and after you fill the platter, put it in the refrigerator to chill for at least 45 minutes before serving.

CLOSE UP VIEW OF FOOD.

EVEN CLOSER VIEW OF STRAWBERRIES AND ROQUEFORT GRAPES.

ENTERTAINMENT. For the playdate, I once again pulled out the bubble machine. Seriously, the Bubble machine I bought was such a good investment. It kept the kids entertained long enough for the moms to sit down.