LoveFeast Table

Pull up a chair, invite a friend and join us!

We found our pumpkins at  Glenna Farms, Country Store & Sugarhouse.  Our family and friends enjoyed a fun afternoon here with a picnic, campfire, and horse rides to the pumpkin patch thanks to the hospitality of the owners, Rick & Kristine Glenna.  It was a great little daytrip!

It was delicious!!  So good, the plates were being licked clean!  My husband declared the apple pie to be the sexiest pie he had ever seen!  I have to say Ina Garten’s recipe, from the Amateur Gourmet’s challenge, produced a chocolate cake that was moist and incredible…I admit, I substituted ground espresso for instant coffee…always a purest!  This will be added to my (recipe) black book!  (Yes, I have a little black book, for my favorite recipes…I’ll share more about that another time!)  The apple pie was “gone in 60 seconds!”  with children hovering to claim any last morsels….two birthdays, two desserts…I don’t even remember what we had for dinner! 

I admit, some days I pull out frozen pizzas for dinner.  And, once I even sent my children and Kristin’s son into a gas station  for breakfast.  But, today was a different day.  I went to bed with visions of anise pumpkin muffins in my head, and woke up inspired.  I have this ongoing fantasy that my children come home to baked bread or chocolate cookie smells–but usually not.   However, this morning was cold, sunny and cold, the kind of fall day in Minnesota that tricks you into thinking you can wear just one layer and then stabs you in the bones all day long.   Today though, on my inspired cooking day, and I was going to warm it up, starting in my kitchen.    I would  have to go to Village Market.   First stop though,  was to fortify myself at the McDonald’s drive through.  Everyone knows you are never suppose to grocery shop on an empty stomach.   As my kids came home from school I started stirring the muffins up, no problem, this is easier than I thought.  My kids were excited and they all taste tested them with their friends.  My fourteen year old even high fived me!   They were impressed,  Mom is baking AND inventing!

Trust me these are so easy any non-cooking microwave zappin’ frozen carryout mama can do it!   Now, who says I didn’t accomplish something today?  Enjoy!  Now, I gotta’ finish the laundry!

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

11/2 Cup flour

1/2 sugar

2tsps. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1tsp. anise flavoring

1/2 cup half and half

1 can pumkin (15oz)

1/4 cup melted butter

1 egg

1 cup chocolate chips

Mix wet ingredients together.  Add dry ingredients and stir.  Spoon into lined muffin tins. Bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.  Makes 12ish.

We stumbled on to Mezze one night in Fells Point!  It was an unexpected suprise!  The Tapas were brilliant.  The flavor combinations were not pretensious or overdone.  The prices were reasonable and the atmosphere condusive to lingering, laughing moments with good friends!

A visit to Kali’s a few weeks later, on the other hand, left me with quite another opinion.

Ok…really, mom is great!  So, get this…today is our friends Derek and Albert’s birthday.  They are coming over with a bunch of friends.  We get together to share a love feast every Sunday night.  So, this week I decided to make their favorite desserts as a gift!  Albert loves apple pie and Derek, chocolate cake.  I began to make my tried and true sour cream chocolate cake and realized I was out of unsweetened choclate.  I sent my husband Devon to the store.  While I was waiting, Chris Ann called.  “Did you see the Amatuer Gourmet’s chocolate cake challenge?”  I hadn’t.  I quick logged on to check it out.  I said, “You will never believe this, but I am in the middle of making a chocolate cake!”  (What are the chances?)  I printed out the recipe off of his blog and shifted gears.  As I began to mix the ingredients, my kids began to filter in…one at a time.  They all wanted to help!  What was it?  “Make it and they will come?”  They were coming in droves to help!!  As I’m typing this, the layers are cooling…the pie is baking and my stomach is anticipating!!  I’ll keep you posted how it turns out!     

For years I have heard amazing, wonderful things about Kali’s Court. My husband and I finally made the time to visit. It was a special evening…we left our 5 kids with my mom…we anticipated an evening of wonderful food and impeccable service! My husband sent his food back. The fish was over cooked. Over cooked fish, should not be in the vocabulary of a restaurant who prides themselves on the freshest of food! Our service was mediocre and the price for this evening, overrated! I don’t mind paying high dollar for a wonderful evening…but this night left us wishing we had headed next door to Mezze instead.

In my home that is a common question.  And, usually the answer is not quite.  You see  actual cooking is really not my thing.  I am rather in the garden pulling out something by its roots, sitting on my porch feet up on my hot pink wicker ottoman sipping tea, or running up and down my stairs with buckets of laundry.  And, what is interesting about the fact that I really don’t like to cook, is that I love everything about food.  I love spices, I love the shine of an apple, I love dishes, modern and old chipped china, I love stemware, I love table lines, and I super love tablescaping.  I love trying new food, and restaurants, and growing food in my deck pots.  I love talking about food.  I love thinking about food.  I love throwing dinner parties.   I just don’t like cooking it.  Strangely, from time to time I hit a groove where I think I might like it.  Usually, its after an inspiring trip to Whole Foods or something.  For awhile, I think, I have patience to stand here and dice chives into small green confetti, really, I do.  I try thinking happy domestic Martha-type thoughts.  I smile at my oven.  I lovingly pat my counter top and survey my ingredients with confidence, sort of.  It’s encouraging really.  And, then, the feeling skips away, like a quick call to Dominoes pizza.  Now, as I write this I’m thinking your totally judging me.  What kind of attempt at food blogging are you really up to here anyway?  Well, I’m hoping for that inspiration.  And, believe me, I’ll be looking for it.  I believe that life is a process and eventually, maybe, all this food stuff will rub off on me, and I’ll learn to smash garlic sideways on a chef’s knife with ease.

So, I was busy cleaning my house and getting the kids ready to hop in the car and my neighbor Meisha knocked on the door.  She handed me a baggie.  A baggie?  “What’s in this Meisha?”  She answered, “A treat just for you!”  I opened the warm bag…unwrapped the napkin and was pleasantly suprised by two homemade, Baltimore style, crab cakes!  That’s the best baggie suprise I ever did have!

It’s never good to valet park with a blue mini van, so we didn’t.  We parked in the back lot and walked to The Splendid Table’s book event at the Room & Board.  It was lovely to be out with my husband and at an “event”.  My goal tonight was to introduce myself to the authors, Lynne Rossetto Kasper & Sally Swift.  They are the hosts and creators of their national radio show, The Splendid Table, and authors of the book, How to Eat Supper.   We eventually found chairs and some wine and settled down to listen to their conversation around sharing food and entertaining.  Lynn Rossetto Kasper started out with a statement that I loved.  She said, that  when we come to the table together,  it is one of the only times we, “sit and look across the table at another human being.”   That, I believe is the premise of what we are trying to do with our blog and cookbook.  To share both our experience at the table, the food, the atmosphere, the gathering, but also, the memory and magic of sitting down with another human being.

Part of their little chat was audio feed of different celebrities and their tips for splendid times around the table.   The first celebrity, was Nora Ephron, her tip was you should never feed your guest fish.  Fish she explained goes down in a “jiffy” and you should serve something that would be painfully slow to eat and that you have to saw away at.  An interesting little bit of gossip here is that she is currently working on a movie starring Meryl Streep based on the book,  Julie & Julia:  365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment, from blogger, Julie Powell.   It just so happens I am more than three quarters of the way through this book.  It is a good read for anyone who would like to know what it would be like to cook through the whole entire Julia Child’s, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.   Then, we listened to Isaac Mizrahi’s tip, which was to bookend your evening with a festive drink and a memorable dessert.   I am a firm believer in festive drinks to get a party started.    Finally, they ended with  Amy Sedaris, who wrote the book,  I like You:  Hospitality Under the Influence.   Her tip:  don’t invite “barnacles”.

Their presentation had ended and now I had to do my “job”.  So, clutching my newly purchased and splendid cookbook I approached Sally Swift.  I introduced myself as a mom of four and having a passion for food and writing, have begun to embark on blogging.  Did she have any tips for me?  Her answer:  I don’t read the blogs.  Hilarious.  My first semi-interviewy thingy and she doesn’t read blogs!  Well, since I was armed with preperation, I shot back then my next question, which was really more of what I was after anyway.  Did she, the famous nationally syndicated and profession food authority and author have her own special and memorable supper memory?  She paused.  Meanwhile, as fifty or so people were lining up to have their cookbooks signed, I was having my “I have a real job and it’s not laundry” moment in my mind, then she answered.  It turns out, when she was in college,  someone who was very influencial in teaching her a lot about cooking had her and some friends to dinner .   This host had purchased each guest their own individual wine glass as a gift for the evening.  She had been touched that this person had gone to the effort, and thoughtfulness, and expense to do this.  This left a memory of a special meal.    What Sally shared with me shows that surprising generosity of spirit can make a night.  And, a good meal memory can leave a lasting life memory.