Category — Recipes

If you know anything about my entertaining style, you know that I love to offer a “Signature” or “Welcome” cocktail when my guests arrive.

For the European Dinner Party, I decided I needed two. That may seem a bit excessive for only four people, but I honestly couldn’t decide between apple or pomegranate on that beautiful autumn evening, so I settled on both.

Sangria is a Spanish and Portuguese beverage that is traditionally served throughout Spain and Portugal during the hot summer months. It is made with summer fruits and juices.

I figured, why not use fall and winter fruits and juices and serve it all year long? Ole!

Spiced Apple Cider Sangria

1 bottle Pinot Grigio
2 cups spiced apple cider
1/2 cup brandy
2 Honeycrisp apples, cored and then chopped
2 Bosc pears, cored and then chopped
1 cup club soda, chilled

Combine all ingredients together, except the club soda, in a large serving pitcher.

Refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours.

Pour sangria into ice-filled glasses; use a slotted spoon to add a few of the apple and pear pieces to each glass. Then top each with a splash of the chilled club soda.

Makes 8 to 10 servings

Note: I found the sparkling pomegranate soda for the next recipe at Trader Joe’s.

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A couple of weekends ago, we had dear friends over for an intimate dinner party. There were just four of us and it could not have been a more lovely and relaxing evening.

Both the husband and the wife of this chic and well-traveled couple are fabulous cooks – so obviously I wasn’t planning on serving them hot dogs and baked beans.

At first, I was thinking of French cuisine. Maybe Italian … or what about Spanish?

Oh, forget it, I’ll just do a bit of everything. From that, my Eclectic European Dinner Party was born.

I’ll be posting a different recipe from the menu- including appetizers, cocktails, soup, salad, and main course – each day this week.

First up: Antipasto Numero Uno….

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I have not cooked in days … for more than a week actually!

Between the craft class, eating out, friends’ parties, cooking classes, ordering in and my birthday – I just haven’t had time.

What could be better to get back into the swing than the combination of pork chops, maple syrup, squash and apples?

Note: You may notice that I only cooked 2 pork chops, but the recipe really and truly is for four chops.

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Once I made the decision to serve chili at the 2013 Fall Craft Party, I knew I wanted one with beef and one with chicken. I already have a Favorite Chicken Chili recipe, but if I made that, then I wouldn’t have a new recipe to blog about!

(*For links to all the craft projects please scroll to the bottom of the page)

And, that my friends, is why I came up with this recipe.

Because I’m always thinking about you, your happiness and well-being – your desire for new and tasty recipes. That’s how I roll. It is who I am.

OK, enough of that, on to the recipe!

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Something highly unusual happened on the way to my 2013 Fall Craft Party.

I sorta forgot about the food.

Honestly, it completely slipped my mind … until the morning of.

That is seriously out of character for me!

Food is always the main thing that I plan nearly every party around. It’s my centerpiece, the reason I have a party in the first place.

This time I was so into the craft aspect; what we’d make, collecting the necessary supplies for each project (9 in all!), deciding how to display each option, writing up and printing out the instruction sheets for each.

Tallying up my expenses and figuring out how much to charge for each craft – OK, that means high-level math was involved, so you can just imagine how many hours of my valuable time that took! Dear Lord, no wonder I forgot about the food!

Anyhow, the morning of the party, I tossed around ideas – a large table of appetizers is always fun but it’s too time-consuming to put together within my restrictive 9-hour time frame.

Chili! That’s the perfect solution!

Exceedingly easy to slap together. Plus it’s tummy-warming and satisfying on a nice October evening.

So chili it was. I jumped in the car and flew into Trader Joe’s; bought a bunch of flowers, cheese, crackers, wine, juices, chili fixings, and sweets.

And that was that.

Here is the first of two chili recipes I’ll be sharing with you… then, later in the week, we’ll get to the crafts.

If the portions in my photos look off from the portions I list on the recipe – I doubled mine –  remember… I was feeding 24 lovely ladies dinner.

And if you are dying to ask – “What is that waffle doing alongside your chili?”

Those my friends are a cornbread waffle! Honestly, just pour the cornbread batter into your waffle iron, and presto – cornbread waffles –  golden crispy goodness! No messing with a muffin pan, just cook them up, place them on cooling racks and then reheat in the oven until ready to serve. Easy as can be.

Wish I’d have thought of it – but no, I found the brilliant idea on Pinterest.

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When my kids were young, there was a chain of restaurants called El Pollo Asado, in our area. I don’t know what happened to them or exactly when they went away. But we really loved their chicken.

Photo credit – stolen from Ty’s Facebook page

Fast forward to this past Sunday when I was over at my cousin, Ty, and his wife Michelle’s, home for potluck Basketball & BBQ.  Since it was a smaller crowd than they’ve had in the past, Ty brought in chicken instead of grilling.

Three it was – that chicken we loved so much – way back when.

Ty said he got the chicken from El Pollo Asado, but when I went to look up the location, I could only find El Pollo Loco. I’m guessing that is what he meant, and where he bought the chicken.

I decided to try and recreate it at home.

This comes pretty close. Not exactly that same distinctive flavor – but close enough – in a pinch.

P.S. Ignore the fact that in the photo above, I have only 2 oranges and 3 limes. I flipped that ratio after the photo was taken and conveniently forgot to take another picture. Please forgive.

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Are you looking for an easy and family friendly side dish?

Look not further, this is it.

It’s as easy as steaming and mashing a whole head of cauliflower, core, and tender leaves included.

Add a little Parmesan, serve with chicken or fish and dinner is on the table in no time.

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Even though I may be a food industry professional who generally avoids big chain restaurants, even I have to admit that Olive Garden’s all-you-can-eat salad and bread-sticks are hard to pass up!

Not that we are frequent diners at Olive Garden. In fact, I believe the only times we’ve eaten there in the past decade have been on road trips.

This is the salad I made for work-weary Marissa and Jeff on Friday night. I have a few more photos of the apartment kitchen too. Here you can see that 6′ 3″ Jeff doesn’t have to stretch much to touch both ends of the kitchen at the same time.

After I complained about how dark the sink area was at night, Dave went to Costco and bought a cool light strip that Jeff and I installed around the kitchen and over the sink. It even has a remote and you can have a full-color light show! Most importantly, it really lights up the place.

Lastly, Marissa used the velvet pumpkins I made for her last year, to cover up and camouflage the TV cords and components on her mantel. Cute!

And most wonderful of all… I found the Jarrahdale pumpkins, which I so love, at Marissa’s corner market which is only two blocks from her house. I smuggled home three of them in our luggage! So excited!

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We return later today from a glorious long weekend, spent with Marissa and her boyfriend, Jeff, in San Francisco and Napa.

Marissa had a very busy and stressful work week, so I made dinner on Friday night in her very small kitchen. When I say small, I mean really small!

In May, Marissa moved from the Outer Sunset neighborhood to Pacific Heights. Part of the tradeoff to living closer to the center of the city was less space.

The closet-sized kitchen is only 7 feet wide by 10 feet long, with less than 25 square feet of walkable floor space and only 3 linear feet of counter space. No dishwasher, no garbage disposal, and a smaller than an average-sized refrigerator.

Speaking of the refrigerator… remember this Friday Funny I posted last week?

It is Marissa’s reality! Here is her refrigerator…

… and here is how mine typically looks. Just a bit of a contrast!

So, what did I make for dinner in the tiny kitchen, you ask?

After a quick trip to Trader Joe’s, I unpacked it all, which took up every inch of counter space, then I proceeded to make a one-pot (no drain) pasta dinner, rounded out with a salad and garlic bread. The salad recipe will be posted tomorrow.

The one-pot Marissa owned, that was big enough, had a lid with holes, for draining pasta. I needed a solid lid so I covered the pot with foil, then added the lid, for a tight seal.

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