Posts Tagged ‘Parties’
” The Commodores Ball”
Posted on: November 22, 2009
What a lovely evening:) The Biloxi Yacht Club holds this ball annually to welcome the new commodore into office. This years event was held at the Biloxi Yacht Club on the third floor in their wonderful banquet room. Chef Bryan out did himself with all the wonderful food offerings. Everyone raved about the food and the free flowing drinks from the bar. The ladies were all dressed in their finery and the men looked very dapper in their suits and ties. The band played some country and some blues and peppered in some 80’s music just for good measure.
The gifts to the retiring commodore were presented about the middle of the evening. The balcony doors were opened to give the dancers some relief and the weather was beautiful. It was slightly overcast and a little bit of dampness in the air from the sprinkle about an hour before the event.
Looking forward to next with our new board and committee chairs. It should be fun.
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DAY One:
- Gather recipes and create a grocery list
- Shop for all food items. Be sure to check your pantry for hidden staple items.
- Your turkey will probably be frozen when you purchase it, so have a cooler ready with ice to start the thawing process.
- Put away your groceries by the day that you are going to use them.
- Desserts will be made on day 2, so the dessert ingredients need to be accessible for the baking night.
- Cranberry sauce will be made on day 3, as well as cutting up some of the ingredients to make the dressing.
- The turkey can be marinated and rubbed the night before so the spices have a chance to meld into the bird.
Day Two:
- Make the Sweet Potato Pie with praline topping
- Make the Chocolate Pecan Pie.
Day Three:
- Make the cranberry sauce.
- Cut up the onions, celery, garlic for the dressing.
- Make the spice rub for the bird.
- Make the injectable marinade for the bird.
Day Four:
- Inject the bird with the marinade.
- Rub the inside and outside of the bird and cover with plastic wrap and put back into the cooler with ice till it is time to cook the bird on day five.
- Cut up the sweet potatoes for the sweet potato casserole.
- Clean the green beans and refrigerate.
Day Five:
- Finish the sweet potato casserole and make the crumb topping.
- Steam the green beans and sauté in brown butter. At the end sprinkle with fried onions.
- Heat the oil outside in the turkey fry pot. The bird should weight no more than 14 pounds and should cook for about 45 minutes.
- Cut up the apples, celery, onions, and walnuts for the waldorf salad. Add sweet mayonnaise/sour cream dressing.
- Make the whipped cream for the pies.
- Make the Cajun dressing..be sure to save some of the spice rub for the dressing this is what makes it soo good…….
Enjoy your thanksgiving dinner…..
Lynda’s Thanksgiving Menu
Posted on: November 12, 2009
I am going to Southern all the way this year.
Deep Fried Turkey
Cajun Dressing
Waldorf Salad
Sweet Potato Casserole with Crumb Topping
Green Beans with Fried Onions
Cranberry Sauce
Sweet Potato Pie with Praline Topping
Chocolate Pecan Pie
Whipped Cream
The game plan will be posted in a day or two. I can already taste this menu and I just found out the crawfish are coming into the markets. May have to get me some and set up a boil here soon as well.
Enjoy:)
I know I am not the only one facing this issue. I like to menu plan and make things nice for the Thanksgiving and Christmas. But I do remember several years back when we lived in Richland, WA and Shelley, ID, where I didn’t want to put up any decorations for these two events. Talk about being a Scrooge. The issue was that we went to Spokane for these two events every year and I really didn’t see the purpose of putting up all the decorations when we were not going to be there to enjoy them. I neglected to think about what it did to my girls by not doing that. Since we have moved to the South, I am more anxious to put up these decorations and get all the fixins together for these events. Unlike the White House, I will have a Christmas tree and celebrate this Thanksgiving with all the gusto the Lord has given to me. I will let you know my Thanksgiving menu and preparation game plan as soon as I have decided how many people we will be having over to the house to celebrate with us.
Happy Halloween
Posted on: October 30, 2009
Are you craving sweet potato pie? Something about halloween and the prospect of thanksgiving just around the corner, gets my mouth watering for this special treat. Being a native from the Pacific Northwest, the tradition was to take the halloween pumpkins and cook the meat to make homemade pumpkin puree. A lot of my grandmother’s cousins and sisters would not have even thought of opening up a can. That would be wasting perfectly good pumpkins. The pumpkin puree would be dark or light depending on the variety of pumpkin you carved that year. I always enjoyed the puree from the smaller variety called the sugar pumpkin. The meat was richer and a deeper shade of copper when baked.
Now that I live in the south, the sweet potato is more prominent. I have always loved the taste of sweet potatoes and when you add pumpkin spices to them it just sends the lowly sweet potato in to tap dance in your mouth. The butter and the cream and eggs just blend so nicely. The texture is to die for. When you pair it with a homemade butter crust and a dollop of homemade whipped cream. You have just reached foodie heaven. I love the convenience of the sweet potato as well. The skins are much easier to peel and you don’t have to saw them to break them apart for cooking. It is one of my favorites for this time of year.
I will add this recipe to the recipe section this weekend.
Monday Morning Blues
Posted on: October 26, 2009
I am dragging this morning. Not enough weekend to catch up on much needed sleep. The weekend was quite eventful. There were two costume parties that we attended and had a great time. I made my famous bolognese sauce with rigatoni. I left before the first party had come to completion as the second one was on the same night and we were already really late. Nothing like driving around town dressed like Batman and Batgirl. No major incidents to report. Just a good time had for all.
It’s Friday!
Posted on: October 23, 2009
You ever have one of those weeks when you thought might not ever reach the end. I had one this week. I love my new job and all its new associations. For the first time in over a year, I am actually happy to get out of bed in the morning and go to work. Instead of a cube, I now work in a bull pen. It is okay because I only have two other people in the pen with me so the noise level is not so bad.
I am back to working off two computers during the day, because of the projects that have me using two different programs. I know that is confusing but that is all the detail I can give. I do miss my best friends at my old place of work every day, but I do not miss the stress and bad management.
I will work on the recipe section a little more this weekend and try to bring in some more old time recipes from my family cookbooks.
Please feel free to send your recipes and stories to me so I can post them on this blog. That way you will feel more connected to my stories and the recipes that have entertained me for the last 30+ years.
Backyard Barbecues
Posted on: October 21, 2009
Have you ever had a spur of the moment party? My husband planned one a couple of weeks ago. It was so funny because he told me the morning of the party that he had invited a few people to come over and enjoy some of the lemon fish he had speared the day before on his scuba diving trip. In my head, I was thinking maybe 6 people total, but as it turned out there were to be about 17 people. The party helped to celebrate my neighbor’s birthday and my friend, Gary, gave us his recipe for Grilled Swordfish with Lime-Ginger Marinade. Needless to say, the barbecue was a success and the grilled lemon fish was to die for, it was so good.
Look for Gary’s recipe in the recipe section.
Good Morning,
I just posted 3 new recipes that my family has enjoyed for the 20 years I stayed home and raised my two little girls who are now grown. The blender dough recipe is from an old, old cookbook that my grandmother used for her bread doughs. She made the best cinnamon rolls west of the Mississippi. I picked up the Hot Chicken Salad recipe from a friend in Blackfoot, Idaho when my husband and I were stationed there the first time. The Chicken A’la King recipe has been handed down from my mother. I make it exactly the way she used to make it.
So have fun with the new recipes and I will be posting more as I get more caught up on my homework in Financial Management.
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Southern sweet potato casserole is nothing like the candied sweet potatoes I was raised on as a child in Spokane. I love candied sweet potatoes. They were sometimes just served with a brown sugar syrup and marshmallows crisped on top of the platter. Sometimes they were mashed and then layered with the marshmallows. It just depended on the cook’s taste of the version you would get to eat. It amazes me how different the version in the south is compared to the northern version. These sweet potatoes are blended with butter, cream and chopped pecans. It has a soufflé consistency and crumbly streusel topping. It is actually a decadent guilty pleasure to eat. Just like the sweet potatoes up north, these are brought for special occasions. The first time I had these was when I was on a road trip with a girlfriend in Charleston. Our boys were out to sea and we were on our way to visit her parents in Panama City, Florida.
I met Lee at orientation for new people coming into the base. She and I hit it right off. Now, I did something an officer’s wife is not supposed to do, but I made her my friend. I had no idea that I was not supposed to do that and there was such a segregation issue for the husbands. As I later found out fraternizing with the enlisted families was a major no, no, and I probably cost my husband, his career in the Navy for my actions. This was not my first incident unfortunately, it happened in our apartment complex in Orlando, Florida as well. If I met you around the pool and I liked you, I didn’t ask if your husband was enlisted or officer. It was not a part of my nature to segregate people. I guess I have always been one to joust at windmills. That part of me has never changed even after all these years.
Our first night was spent in Augusta, Georgia. The second night was somewhere between Tallahassee and Panama City. We stopped at Lee’s grandma’s house way out on this country road. It was extremely rustic, but then again I had grown up in some rustic conditions as well. Lee’s grandma’s house was set on low piers up off the ground. I am guessing this was because of flooding in the area, but this seems to be the normal mode of construction the closer to the Gulf of Mexico you are. Lee’s grandma had the table set in fine linen and it was just filled with food. There was a ham, collard greens, green beans, sweet potato casserole, cornbread, salads, and a lemon meringue pie for dessert. There was another cousin of Lee’s already at the house, but the quantity of food for the amount of people was mind boggling. Back then, I barely ate anything. A few bites here and there and it was worse when John was out at sea. I would just not eat because I was too lazy to fix something for myself. If it weren’t for the neighbors watching out for me, I am sure I would have perished.
We sat down to this feast and I took a camper’s bite of everything so I could get more on my plate and also if I didn’t like it, I would only have to eat a small portion without any waste. I could hardly wait for the lemon pie. The funny thing is instead of pie for dessert, I ended up eating some more of that sweet potato casserole. It was so good……
We cleaned up the dishes and put away the left-overs. We knew that there would be more, later if we were still hungry. All meals are leisurely and it is a time for fellowship and telling stories. Lee’s grandma did not have a television set that I can remember. It was one of the most relaxing times I had for being just a tag a long on this trip. I think we ended spending a week in Panama City before returning to Charleston. Every time I go to Panama City, I wonder if I am going to run into Lee. The last time I heard from her she was still in Charleston. She was enrolled in nursing school. It has been at least 24 years since that trip. I love sharing food memories with you. I am sure it helps to bring back some memories for you as well. I have noticed as I grow older that these food memories are more important and need to be shared.
Gulf Coast Style 