Cocktail Party: in 30 minutes or less

Chicken Satay with a Sesame Peanut Dipping Sauce

Grilled Shrimp with a Spicy Chimichurri

Dill-icious Dip

For my sister's birthday we decided to go low key and have a few friends over for cake and cocktails, but wanted to have a couple of nibbley things to munch on as well. It was already late in the afternoon, so I looked in the fridge and the pantry trying to come up with something to make. I pulled out some shrimp and boneless skinless chicken thighs from the freezer ('cause that's what we had on hand), and put the chicken in the microwave to defrost, and defrosted the shrimp in a colander in the sink under cold water. After pealing the shrimp, I whipped up a chimichurri (parsley, cilantro, lime juice, lime zest, garlic, cumin, olive oil, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper) in the blender and set it aside. I hadn't ever made Satay before this evening, and didn't really have a recipe, so I threw all caution to the wind and took my cleaned blender and tossed in some peanut butter, rice wine vinegar, toasted sesame oil, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, red pepper flakes, a little cilantro, a little sugar, salt and pepper, and blended. Yum! I took half of this mixture and poured it over my cut up chicken, and reserved the other half for dipping. I preheated my broiler, and my Cuisinart counter top grill, and in another ten minutes time I had two finished dishes ready for plating. Luckily for me we had some previously made Dill dip in the fridge, so I sliced up some bell peppers, and some of Brandy's home grown, garden fresh cucumbers, and voila! We shook up some pomegranate martinis, rimmed our glasses with sugar, and we were ready for a party.

Caution: Stiff Jam

I went to the fairgrounds to collect my ribbons yesterday, and received them all as expected. What I wasn't expecting, however, was that they would give me all of my cards, with some of the judges comments on the back of them. Writing on the back of the cards seems to be a judges prerogative, so some of them had comments and some of them didn't. But certainly all of it is good to know for the future.

My blueberry jam was not opened and disqualified because of "poor fill." (um, really? I don't even know what that means.) My apricot jam (which placed 3rd) was marked down as being "too stiff." (I mean haven't we all said at one point or another "gosh this jam is so delicious but it is SO STIFF I nearly broke my knife in half trying to get it out of the jar., I think I broke a tooth!" lol, I think that is hysterical.) In regards to my buttermilk biscuits (which placed 2nd) the judge commented "Tastes a little sweet. Nice color. A little on the big side." I personally think they have the perfect balance of salty and sweet, but to each his own. And having cut them with a standard sized biscuit cutter, size seems a strange thing to be marked down for, especially considering how small and disgusting the first place winner's biscuits looked at the fair (all crumbly, and gray), but you know, whatever. My rolls say "Nicely shaped. Perfectly brown. Very under baked." And having eaten the remainder of that batch myself, the rolls were no where near under baked, so don't even get me started on that one. Perhaps they enjoy a more crusty bread, that's fine. The BOC winning scones say simply "super moist. love the ingredients. perfectly browned." And the rest of the cards are blank.

I would have liked comments on the brownies too (the winning brownies had walnuts in them, which I don't include because of my being allergic to them, and I wonder if this played into mine not placing higher), but I will take what I can get. All of the feedback is good to know for the future. I think I will win next year's biscuits if I (begrudgingly) cut the sugar and the size a bit. And if only I could find a way to loosen up my cement jam. I think I will also be entering the gift basket and table setting competitions next year, just for fun (and because all of the entries this year were very sad looking and no where near award earning, so the playing field seems pretty clear for an easy win). And I will be entering many more items in the future. I will have that grand prize, so help me god, and I don't care how many old ladies I have to trample over to get to it!

While you were sleeping. . .

I have a friend who comes over to my house once or twice a week, for cocktails, laughter, television, or whatever. We love having her here, she is great, we always manage to have a good time even when we are just sitting around doing nothing. The problem is that this friend, who shall remain nameless (ahem-Gabrielle), always falls asleep. Without fail she will inevitably fall into a deep coma and slump over in her chair mid-evening, be it mid-Project Runway or mid-sentence. And no matter how much she may try to deny it, or how many jokes we might make about it, when she walks in the door, we all know that at some point in the night she will most assuredly be napping. Right now, for example, she is sleeping in the other room, curled up on the sofa with a comfy blanket and a tiny little chihuahua. She has been there for more than three hours now. But I can't really begrudge her that, after all, we are all sleep deprived, and sometimes, let's face it, you have to sleep it off before you can safely drive home.

The good news about Gabrielle's I.N.C. (Inconsiderate Narcoleptic Comas) is that usually, had she gotten up and said "well I'm tired, I'm going home," I would have wished her a safe trip, and proceeded to laze about watching bad TV until sleep finally came MY way. But instead, since she is here, I become strangely enlivened and motivated to get stuff done. Like her unused potential energy is somehow magically transmuted into my kinetic energy through her sleep.

Instead of sitting around on my ass doing nothing, for example, in the last three hours of her blissful sleeping, I have watched a movie that needs to be returned tomorrow (Prom Night. . .dumb I know, but I find most horror movies to be pretty watchable, there I have said it. Stop judging me!), unloaded and loaded the dish washer, washed and dried a load of laundry, wiped down the counters, written three emails, read all my favorite blogs, made a grocery list, pulled out dinner for tomorrow night from the freezer, flipped through this month's W and Harper's Bazaar, and written this blog entry.

So basically what it all boils down to is this: if all of you could just come to my house and nap in shifts, there is no telling what other wonderful things I might be able to accomplish. After a week I would no doubt have single handedly solved our nation's health care crisis, our dependence on foreign oil, and safely pulled our troops out of Iraq, all while intermittently baking untold numbers of award winning treats. Nap your way to world peace. It's win win.

Correction

I have just learned that in addition to winning the 1st Place Blue ribbon, my Cranberry-Orange Scones were also awarded Best of Class.

Meaning that of all of the 18 lots in the quick breads category (scones, biscuits, all of the muffins, banana, zucchini, and pumpkin breads, coffee cakes, corn breads, ginger breads, doughnuts, etc.) that received blue ribbons, mine was the BEST OF THEM ALL!!!!!

(pats self on back)

May I have a drum roll please. . .

And the winner is. . .

ME!!!!!

The state fair results are in, and while I didn't place in everything I turned in (most notably and unjustly not for Grandma Browning's rolls, I mean come on? Really?) I did place in a couple of them. The results are as follows (keeping in mind that this is my first time at the fair, and I only turned in ten items):

Cranberry-Orange Scones - 1st place
(that's right bitches, THE BEST in Oregon)

Cranberry-Almond Biscotti - 1st Place

Pecan Bars - 1st Place

Buttermilk Biscuits - 2nd Place

Triple Chocolate Brownies - 3rd Place

Apricot Jam - 3rd Place


So as it turns out, the boy CAN cook. Who knew?

First the Oregon State Fair, next THE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!

Too tired to try

I just kind of threw these platters together, without my usual attention to detail, and eye for presentation. But my sister, who is bringing these into her office for a meeting tomorrow, doesn't care quite as much about presentation as I do. And since I am so tired tonight, instead of stunning, I figured I could get away with slapdash. If I had more energy I would have liked to have more artfully arranged the items, thrown in some grapes, or strawberries for color, and offset the platters with lemon or hydrangea leaves (lovingly stolen from the yards of friends). But, you know, coulda, shoulda, woulda.

For your consideration...

So it is official. I have turned in all of my entries for the Oregon State fair.

My entry included 1 jar each of Apricot and Blueberry jam and six of each of the following:
Grandma Browning's Rolls, Buttermilk Biscuits, Cranberry-Orange Scones, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies, Cranberry-Almond Biscotti, Triple Chocolate Brownies, and Pecan Bars.

It is now out of my hands. It's all in good fun. If I don't place in any category, I will, of course, be humiliated, and be forced to question my entire self worth as a human being, but you know, whatever.

Breaking Bread

Grandma Browning's Rolls

I know surprisingly little about my great great grandmother, Sophronia Louise Browning. Family folk lore paints the picture of her being a strong minded, strong willed woman, being at times inflexible, uncompromising, manipulative, and even vicious. But what I do know, what I have always known, is that these are Grandma Browning's rolls. Ever since I was a small child, that is what they have been called. Never dinner or yeast rolls, never simply bread, her name was always attached to this dough, like the recipe itself was consubstantial with her very being. For all I know she too learned this recipe from her grandmother, there is no telling how far it goes back. Maybe the Snow family brought it here with them from Europe on the Mayflower itself. There is no way of knowing. But what there is to know, is that there has never been a holiday dinner or important family gathering in the last one hundred fifty years which did not include these light, feathery rolls.

My grandmother Iris (or Grandma I, as we have always called her) would use this dough for everything. It was her all purpose dough. Cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning, pizza crust, dough nuts, loaves of bread, bagels, anything was possible, nothing was out of the reach of its magic. About eight or ten years ago, when her health began to fail and she was no longer able to make the rolls for our gatherings, she passed the torch on to me, as it had been passed to her, and I have been making them for our family ever since. I, of course, have put my own modern spin on the recipe, as she no doubt did hers. In this way, it is a collection of all of us. All of our secrets, our tricks, our special touches, our memories, our happiness, our holidays.

My Kitchen Aid mixer now makes easy work of the kneading process. But as a child, standing on a stool, my hands on her cutting board, squishing the dough between my tiny fingers, I remember Grandma I smiling down at me, telling me that this was special bread, that this bread had to be kneaded for twenty-five minutes. No more. No less. And to this day, whether in the mixer, or by hand, I ensure that it kneads for exactly that long.

We don't have inheritances in my family. We don't have trust funds, war bonds, stock market portfolios, or priceless antique furniture to leave behind. But we do have this dough: our own little yeasty legacy. This dough that has spanned at least five generations. This dough that has been with us all along. Delicious.

Painfully Chocolate Brownies

These brownies are my triple chocolate death threat. Rivers of melted chocolate, butter, eggs, chocolate chunks, and coffee, are held together with the smallest amount of flour allowable by law. These chocolaty treats fall somewhere between fudge and "f*ck you these are good."

Pe-Can't

The amazing, the delicious, the irresistible Pecan Bars of happiness.

While I was granted the ability to produce these magical confections, unfortunately, (through some horribly evil, cosmic, voodoo curse) I am allergic to pecans. I cannot, I must not give in to their siren song, no matter how delicious they may look, no matter how good they might smell.

Oh Satan, why are your evil nuts so temptingly delicious?