LoveFeast Table

Merry Christmas from our LoveFeast Table to yours!  Kristin & Chris Ann

Screech!!! To a halt!  I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am for the two feet of snow we got here in Baltimore!  I know, I know, in Minnesota, two feet is an every day occurrence!  Chris Ann was just saying the other day she was driving her daughter to soccer in the snow.  Yes, she plays outdoors no matter what the weather!  They are hard core up there!  But, here in Baltimore, a call for two inches swipes the shelves clear of toilet paper and milk. So, just imagine for a minute what it was like for us with a prediction of 24 inches!  Almost total gridlock in the parking lots!  Of course, I made a daring excursion to the grocery store right before the storm to load up on baking supplies.  Can you believe the flour shelf was empty!  I guess everyone had the same idea!  Bake for Christmas!

Yesterday I woke up and baked!  I baked, till I was baked and I baked baked goods from Baked! (Did you follow that?!)  I started with the dough that needed to be refrigerated.  I made Sugar Cookies from Baked, Snickerdoodles from Magnolia Bakery and then moved onto Monster Cookies from Baked.  I made homemade pie crust (my favorite recipe of all time) from Classical Home Desserts and made quiche for all my boys who had been out shoveling!  I then moved on to mini black bottoms from Magnolia Bakery...the best I have ever tasted…and Butterscotch Pecan Brownies.  Can you believe, my husband then came in and said, “Since you’re baking, I’d really like some homemade bread!”  Being totally in the groove, I kneaded a couple of loaves of Breakfast Bread from Martha Stewart’s cookbook.  I have to tell you, I was officially baked!

My kids went to work filling tins for their teacher gifts of the delicious goodies we had baked!  We slid Monster Cookies into brown paper packages and tied them with string! These are a few of my favorite things!  (sorry, couldn’t resist!)

I cleaned up my mess, my hubby poured me a glass of wine, I popped on the sofa and cracked open a book.  He made dinner…spicy, curry with cauliflower, potatoes, carrots and coconut rice.  (I love having a man who cooks!)  We ended watching a movie.

I am so grateful we got snowed in!  Being baked never felt so good!

Picking out a tree is a very personal thing.  You really have to find the right one.  The tree that speaks to you….the tree that says I want to be in your life.

You need to round up the right posse to look for a tree.

You need to look hard at the tree from every angle….

More than one set of posse is even more helpful…and fun.

And, you need to bring along a professional tree analyzer.

And, a professional tree rapper.  This makes the tree feel special.

And, even if you don’t have a professional tree cutter…it will be OK.

Make sure you have a little elf to decorate it.

How do you do your tree?

Sometimes, Minnesota seems like a barren tundra of cold to me…and then one day, more than a few months ago I was walking through a mall parking lot and I came across this and my hope was restored.

Only in America would you find a car like this! -specifically cold northern America.

Oh, my lands, only in the Land of 10,000 Lakes – a project for the long winter!

And, quite possibly only in Minnesota!! -because we need to amuse ourselves during the white outs!

What a thrill to discover it was covered in plates! -’cause this a food blog, after-all!

Plates with kitchen wisdom….

and honest truths!

Plates with messages, I took personally.

During my photo snapping guess who eventually came around?

This is Jan, the owner of this car!!  She has a passion for collecting and searching for the mystery in society’s bi-products! And, she works in schools!  And because this is a foodie blog I couldn’t resist asking Jan what Minneapolis restaurants she recommends and they are: The Craftsman, 112 Eatery, & La Belle Vie.

Jan is also the proud owner of the Cork Truck and participates in something called the Art Shanty Project.  This is something some Minnesotan’s do in January even when the current temperature is zero degrees Fahrenheit, like today or less.  (Ever hear of the phrase “cold snap”–it’s a Minnesota thing, and I’m pretty sure it’s a form of brain damage.)  The Art Shanty Project is a temporary artist community built on frozen Medicine Lake, west of Minneapolis because in the middle of the winter some people here begin to ask “What can you do with a lake in January when you can’t swim in it?“  Here is a closer look into that sort of “cold snap” outcome– a video of some of the artists’ thoughts and explanations of this event from a previous year…watch this.  Now you can see what really goes on here in Minnesota…and you can see if I complain a little, it’s just a form of survival and a way of moving my mouth to create some body heat.

According to the website it looks like Jan is going to be there this year in the Art Car Taxi Shanty, so I’m going to try and drag my Suburbia Man and kids there to follow up with Jan and remind them that where we live is really really cool…. I mean, cold.  And, to let them see really really cool art…. I mean, cold art.  Here is what I think a very real look at what happens to the northern Minnesota brain in the middle of the winter -again, it is just a logical guess that this project took place…during a very long gray winter.

Saturday January 16, 2010 is the opening day of this year’s Art Shanty Project.  It’s going to be cold..again, just a logical guess… but, “it’s something to do in January” if you want to “get out and play“.  And, I heard there might be food?  Want to join me?  Comments, conclusions, questions, & expressions of outrage…feel free to share!

Last weekend Suburbia Man and I were at the Mall of America doing some Christmas shopping.  MOA had slightly died down from the masses of people herded up at the Pioneer Woman book signing.  We had been lapping the mall and our blood sugar was dipping when we happened to pass by the Godiva store with a sign out front that said 20 percent off-it caught my eye, I love a deal….even a mini-deal! But, then the cheerful gals behind the counter beckoned me in with an offer of a cup of hot chocolate!   Let me tell you, that was one great pit stop….first of all they offered me a free cup of hot chocolate, dark hot chocolate…it was amazing.  And then, free chocolate dipped strawberries!  I’m serious!  I was like, this is the best pit stop ever!!  How does this relate to the scone picture?  Well, I think this scone recipe would be the bomb with this hot chocolate!  What?  You say your snowed in like me and can’t get yourself to the nearest Godiva store?  Well then you’re in luck, because I bought one for me, and one for one of you!  Dark chocolate.  Smooth. Creamy.  Delicious.  And, I got the tip of the day from the Godiva Girls.  Blenders.  Make the hot chocolate and then whip it around in the blender.  It goes to new heights of smoothy-ness!!  That’s a fact.

Which leads me to the scones.  Last summer my friend Kelli had me over for coffee and baking and she made these scones substituting in plump summer cherries and almonds.  This is her recipe using cranberries.

Cranberry, Orange & White Chocolate Scones

1/3 Cup dried Cranberries

3/4 Cup Buttermilk

2 Cups Flour

2 Tbsp. Sugar

2 Tsp. Baking Powder

1/4 Tsp. Baking Soda

1/4 Tsp. Salt

1 Tbsp. grated Orange Rind

1/3 Cup cold Butter

1/2 Cup White Chocolate Chips

Milk (to brush tops of scones)

Sugar (to sprinkle at the end)

(Another option is to substitute 1/2 Cup pitted and halved fresh cherries for the cranberries and to add 1/2 sliced almonds.)

Combine cranberries & buttermilk in a small bowl.  Set  aside.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and orange rind.

As you cut butter into small shaving, let it drop into flour mixture.

Use a pastry blender to work it through the dry ingredients.

Add white chocolate chips, cranberries, and buttermilk.

Turn dough out onto floured surface.

Knead & pat into a circle with 3/4 inch thickness.

Using a large knife, cut it like a pie-into 6 or 8 pie wedges.

Place onto a stone or lightly greased baking sheet.

Brush scones with milk and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake at 400 degrees for 18 minutes or until lightly golden.

These are Kelli’s secrets for flaky scones:

*Work quickly.

*The colder the butter the better

*Cut it in & get them into the oven fast.

(Or….try Kristin’s Cranberry Muffins!  One reader I recently bumped into tried them and loved them!)

OK, so here is the deal because I share and I’m snowed in… one of you gets to win the Godiva Dark Hot Chocolate!  Just leave a comment here with your best cabin-fever tips or what you like to add to spruce up your hot chocolate!!  This LoveFeast Table GiftAway will end Thursday at 10pm and the winner will be announced over the weekend!

Our Italian Party Peacock announces our Breville GiftAway Winner!!  Javier Mendoza!!

Here is the brand spankin’ new Breville Baby!  It is flying via stork or UPS to Javier, who is not only going to be a proud Breville Papa, but soon to be a proud Papa in general.  Congratulations Javier, this Breville couldn’t have gone to anyone needier than the parent of a newborn!  We know….we’ve been there, 9 times total!

The drawing was completed on Thursday, 3 December 2009 at 20:43:50 UTC.
http://www.random.org/draws/details/?draw=1137

Also, for the record.  We must disclose that we received this espresso machine from an awesome company that makes awesome products, Breville USA.  This is how the whole thing went down!  More than a year and a half ago, Kristin & Devon and their gang of kids took a road trip from Baltimore to Minneapolis via the Dakotas to visit us.  If you’re tracking that road map, they passed us to the Dakotas and then did a loop back.

Kristin and Devon are coffee lovers to say the least.  Some years back they owned their own coffee shop on Historic Ellicott City’s cobbled streets.  (If you look closely at the previous link, their place was the 3 storied building with the green shutters next to the lit up building.)   A few years ago, after wearing out their old machine they replaced it with a Breville.  So, when they had to hit the road, knowing how many stops they would have to make to deliver the amount of caffeine needed to drive half way across the United States, they decided to pack their Brev’.

Somewhere along the way, they discovered outlets….outlets in vacant lots, outlets in rest stops, outlets in hotel room and outlets near McDonald’s.  Their road trip begin to take on a new meaning….the Breville took on a sort of gnome-like, personality.  Kristin and Devon and their 5 kids arrived a few days later at our home, in Minnesota, fully charged.  A year or so later a post was born and life went on ….. and blogging went on.  And, then one day, more than a year later,  I noticed that Breville USA had just started tweeting.  I tweeted a link to our “RoadTrip +Breville (espresso machine, that is)” and they responded back.  Turns out they kinda’ liked our little road-trip!  A friendship or should I say twitter-ship began between us and the next thing we know, one Fancy Friday while we were working the doorbell rang and some Breville boxes arrived on the porch.  The Breville-s had landed.

So, for full disclosure, yes Breville gave Kristin and I some Breville espresso machines…one is parked in Kristin’s kitchen, one in mine, and one quite shortly in Javier’s.  And, ya, in the interest of Breville and our little growing blog (141 comments whohoo!!!)  we tweeted and Facebook-ed it up!!  That’s called endorsement.  But, for the record we traveled with our Brev’ long before this fun began!  So that’s just how it all started…..we like coffee, we like Breville, we like travel, Breville liked our post, Breville-s landed.  But, the real question is, where will the Breville-s go next?  You’ll have to stay tuned for that, we have our thinking hats on….I’m sure we’ll come up with some sort of idea, cause we like to cruise around, we like to travel and we like our shots of espresso straight from our Brev’s.  ‘Cause that’s how we roll!

Now I wonder what we’d do with juicers? hmmmmm

So, thanks friends for all your great comments!!  Your travel ideas were thoughtful and funny!!  We hope you take your travel ideas and follow your dreams!  And, Javier, we wish you nights full of sleep and mornings full of espresso!!  And, many joys with your future baby!!  Maybe we’ll give her a nickname around here like little cuppa’ cuteness!!  So, in honor of your future package and your future arrival we would like to offer our comments up for new born baby advice, best wishes and congratulations!

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” ~Henry Miller