Posts Tagged ‘food’

this past weekend, we threw a surprise bridal shower for my sister boot . she will officially be my sister in 2 months! woohoo!!!

the bridesmaids and my mom and i worked hard to give the very best shower we could, and i think we were successful! it was a surprise up to the end, as far as we can tell.

it was a hot day, but we had some fans to help move the air around, so it wasn’t as unbearable as it could have been. i think everyone had a good time! thank you everyone who helped, and thank you everyone who came to make the day special for a very special lady!!!

the tent in our back yard

loads of food

more food

everyone signed around this photo for k & b

everyone signed around this photo for k & b

goat milk soap from lyric hill farm for favors

the most perfect favors ever!

homemade pinwheels

lemonade and iced tea

everyone needs a bride mannequin at a bridal shower

surprise!!!

big hugs!

bride to be

delicious red velvet cake and adorable cake topper

delicious red velvet cake and adorable cake topper

gifts galore

katie loves the hammock, so that's where she opened all her gifts

the day ended with a double rainbow!

this past sunday night kevin and i were lucky enough to go see one of our favorite bands, marcy playground! last year when i was in antarctica i had heard they were going to play at mohegan sun at the wolf’s den, and i was so bummed that i was going to miss it! they just put out an AWESOME new cd last year ‘leaving wonderland…in a fit of rage’ – i highly recommend it to everyone.

most of you, i’m sure, only know their song ‘sex and candy’ – but believe me when i tell you that they have 4 awesome albums with MANY MANY amazing songs!

we heard they were going to play at the infinity music hall in norfolk, ct. its about an hour away from where i live, up in the northwest hills. some friends of ours had been there, but we hadn’t ventured out that way yet – so we were excited to see the venue as well as the band. we were blown away by both! not to mention the awesome food that the bistro attached to the music hall serves!

inside the music hall are amazing black and white photographs from rolling stone, shot by the man who is the infinity’s announcer – how cool!

my photos of the inside do NOT do it justice. if i had known i could have taken the SLR camera in, i would have – but i only had a point and shoot. next time i’ll bring the SLR!

for dinner, kevin got a lobster roll on a brioche hotdog roll, served with tempura onion rings, drawn butter and some pickles. i opted for the pan seared halibut with pistachio butter over hibiscus crepes and baby bok choy – SO delicious. oh! and for an appetizer we had edamame hummus – YUM!

the opening band was the jason spooner trio – a VERY good band! you should check them out on youtube for sure. their songs were great and they worked really well together as a band.

marcy playground was even better than i had expected. the acoustics in the hall were awesome for them, they played a great set, and they looked like they were having so much fun on stage – i think that makes a huge impact on how a band plays. the venue wasn’t even close to sold out, but they didn’t seem to care, they played as if they were playing to a full house. that really makes me, as a fan, feel important. more than once i’ve been to a show with a sparse audience, and the band doesn’t give it their all, i can very easily say that this was NOT the case with marcy playground.

after the show i acquired a set list (yay!) and then we made our way downstairs where the band members were greeting anyone who wanted to meet them, and signing autographs and taking pictures. all in all a perfect end to a perfect evening!

thank you john wozniak, dylan keefe and shlomi lavie for making our evening so amazing! we can’t wait to see you again.

yummy edamame hummus

lobstah

halibut

woohoo!

infinity music hall

infinity music hall

infinity music hall

looking down to the stage from the balcony

the awesome ushers of the infinity!

the stellar bartender of the infinty!

the bar

a blade from the big ass fan

crappy shot of the big ass fan

stage

seating

the box

jason spooner trio

jason spooner trio

jason spooner trio

jason spooner trio

jason spooner trio

jason spooner trio

jason spooner trio

john wozniak

john wozniak

marcy playground

dylan keefe

dylan keefe

dylan keefe

john wozniak

john wozniak

dylan keefe

shlomi lavie and henrietta

john wozniak

john wozniak

john wozniak and i!

kevin, john wozniak, me and shlomi lavie

john wozniak and kevin

set list! john wrote in the additional songs

the other night i had a hankering for carrot soup, which i haven’t had since i left antarctica. carrot soup was one of the highlights of my winter last year – it always put me in a good mood when we were serving it! thanks to my friend angie, i am now in possession of a fantastic carrot soup recipe! i just love the versatility of it. once you have the carrot soup base, you can pretty much add anything you want to spice it up – or just eat it plain. this weekend i made some carrot ginger soup, which should last me all week and is positively delicious!

carrots and veggies boiling in vegetable stock

i had to borrow an immersion blender from my neighbor andrea - thanks andrea!

yummy ginger

delicious soup!

last night we decided to whip up some wontons as well. we were going to just bake all of them, but couldn’t resist the temptation to pan fry a few of them! we made two kinds, chicken and vegetable and just plain vegetable – both were awesome. for the veggies we used cabbage, snap peas, carrot, and purple onion. the carrots and snap peas added a nice, sweet taste! for spice we used fresh ginger, fresh garlic, and a bit of ground black pepper. for the chicken we sautéed it and then threw it in the food processor to shred it up. no spice there – just plain chicken this time. we figured the veggies would have enough spice to share with the chicken.

all in all they were pretty awesome! i would definitely make them again – not too hard at all. time consuming, yes, but totally worth it. we ended up baking them at 350 for about 15 minutes. they could have probably gone a bit longer, but they were tasty just the way they were. we had a bunch of left over chicken, so kevin used it to make chicken salad to have on some honey oatmeal bread for dinner!

veggie in the food processor

onion and cabbage

all processed, now we sauté a little

wrappers with helpful folding info

chicken

veggie and chicken ready to fold up

first fold

pan frying!

baked - just out of the oven

all winter we haven’t flights in. therefore, whatever we had for fresh fruit ran out early on (march maybe?). we have had some fresh veggies from the greenhouse, but its just not the same as eating an apple or a banana.

when the first flight of winfly (this short period i’m going through now of winter fly-in) comes in – there is a small order of freshies on it for winterovers only. apples, bananas and oranges. each winterover is given a brown paper bag, and they are to fill their bag as full as they can with freshies. no overfilling, no stuffing pockets, be nice to all your fellow winterovers and make sure that they all get freshies too!

here are a few shots from last week when we got freshies in!

freshies!

check out the crazy winterovers

one of the delicious sides that we served was asparagus wrapped in filo dough and topped with a little balsamic glaze.

it was very tasty – and looked great. it was quite time consuming to make, and caitlin jumped in to help us out.

caitlin rolling asparagus

click here to see what it looks like all finished!

we had so much good food for midwinter dinner – one of my favorite passed appetizers were these beef skewers. they were marinated and grilled, and we had 2 platters being passed. each platter had a different dipping sauce. one was sweet chili sauce (my new favorite condiment), and the other was an orange peanut sauce (also awesome).

i don’t have any pics of the platters that we passed, but here are a few prep photos!

prepping the meat to be skewered

more meat on a stick here

two of the passed appetizers we served were chicken wontons and lamb raviolis. both items are quite time consuming prep-wise. we had some great community volunteers in the galley to help us make these dishes!

angie showing shandra and gordon how to prep wontons

such yummy food!

i was trying to come up with an idea for a cool chocolate dessert for midwinter dinner, and i thought of making edible chocolate cups and filling them with something. i was sure that it would be too time consuming, and that we may not figure out what to fill the cups with, but josie assured me that we could get the cups done on time, and we could fill them with chocolate mousse. it did take a lot of time, but it was well worth it!

we used large muffin cups and then painted melted chocolate on the inside of the cups, chilling them in the walk in cooler between layers. in the end we put 4 layers of chocolate on, and then started the painstaking task of peeling off the paper cups. it wasn’t as hard as i expected once you get a system down for paper peeling.

the result was (i think) amazing! and not as hard as i expected. i can’t wait to make these at home for something!

yay, more empty cups

who knew melted chocolate could be so fun!

for midwinter dinner, josie made a fantastic selection of chocolates (with help from jon, carl, myself and a few community volunteers). we had white chocolate peanut butter cups, regular chocolate peanut butter cups, white chocolate raspberry cups, kahlua truffles, oreo truffles, bailey’s truffles, green tea truffles, and chai tea truffles (i could be forgetting something, but i think that’s all of ‘em).

it was a lot of prep work – but they came out awesome!

first we fill the sheet pan with paper cups

i know you want to see them all filled with amazingness

midwinter dinner was this past weekend. its a lot of prep work for a fantastic dinner that is the best meal served here all year long. there was a great team of volunteers that transforms the galley into something fantastic that looks different every year. i took a massive amount of photos that i am still sorting through, so you’ll see a few posts about this coming up.

today we’ll start with jon’s awesome project for the dessert display. we named him geoge.

6 cakes were used for the body of the penguin

wait til you see what it looks like all done!