A Warm Potato Salad

Maybe 30 years ago we had a girl, Pascaline, from Belgium live with us. We had to bring a dish for a pot luck party and she suggested a salad dish of rice, green beans, onions, oil and vinegar. Then her mom, Therese, came another time and made one of our now standby favorites: potatoes, green beans cooked together with a little butter.

We had some left over BBQ’d small potatoes, green beans and other ingredients. It was a warm evening so I’d decided on a potato salad.

Here is the salad:

Small cooked potatoes, chopped into bite-size pieces, just warm.

Green Beans cut up and cooked

A little onion chopped fine

Olive oil to taste.

A spoonful of mustard to taste.

I’m not crazy about vinegar so I don’t use it but you can to make the vinaigrette.

Mix the oil and mustard together, I find a whisk works well.

Add to the potatoes, green beans and onion in a bowl and toss until the potatoes and beans are coated.

We had this along with a green salad for dinner. Very filling!

Eating Extravanganza in Santa Fe

Thanks to the friends and relatives who voted for me, our Santa Fe trip is becoming a reality.

Several months ago the Santa Fe School of Cooking, santafeschoolofcooking , had a contest; it was a photo contest with the winner receiving certificates for 2 cooking classes. I made sure that I had the most votes by begging and pleading with anyone and everyone.

The trip is planned:

Tuesday we fly

Wednesday we will spend in Taos with an early lunch at La Cueva Café where they serve gluten free New Mexican food. Dinner will be at Orlando’s, we went there with Elias on the last grandkids trip, a place highly recommended by the locals.

We hope to visit our vacation home in Taos in the afternoon. This is a home that we found when Taos dreaming last year. The Mega Millions was really high and times here were not so it was easy to take a couple of hours to dream. I got on-line and found a house that screamed our names: http://www.realestatetaos.com/taos_real_estate_canonheights.php

I e-mailed the realtor about the brand of the stove and said that we’d come and look at it someday. A couple of weeks ago I emailed again and was told that it had just sold but he thought that the sale might fall thru. It appears that it is still on the market and the price has been lowered so next week we hope is our day to look. Unfortunately we have not won a lotto so alas, we can only look and dream.

Thursday is back to reality with our 1^st cooking lesson, this is a hands-on lesson in making Chili Rellenos. They will show me how to make them gluten free. In the afternoon we will walk a bit on the Santa Fe Trail then eat at The Shed.

Friday is a demonstration in Contemporary Southwest cooking; making grilled salmon, a tamale, black beans, and flan. This is a huge meal!!! In the afternoon we will visit the San Miguel Mission built in the 1600’s, the oldest house and then we will eat at the Chocolate House.

Saturday’s class includes: green chili stew, blue corn and green chili muffins, pinion butter among other dishes.  We will leave from the class and return home.

After each class a full meal is served so we will be on an eating extravaganza!

What A Downton Party

What a dinner, what a party!!!

I cooked or was working with the table settings all day long it seemed, so many little details. I wore out the Downton Abbey dinner websites. Which way did the knives face, where were items placed, on and on. I had probably 5 pages open just of Downton sites for recipes and photos for reference. But what a difference a laptop makes.

Friends arrived, the last of them a little after 7pm; oops, now we had to institute the “no talking, just eat” policy. Except that we wanted some photos before dinner, before our hats would be askew, layers of aprons off, that sort of thing.

Everyone was in period clothing, one was in something that was a maybe period clothing but we stretched and saw the connection with Downton. One friend a flapper, one as Daisy, one as a soldier, our granddaughter as maybe Sybil, the rest of us in period dress.

As for the meal, well food was really good, if I must say so myself. Recipes were based on the ones from “Mrs. Beeton” or from the Titanic Menus. Best of all everything was gluten free even my piece of the Treacle Tart. Unfortunately, foods were rich, laden with creams, except for the Wine Jelly full of wine.

Our friends did talk way too much; it was hard to rein them into the dining room. They were having way too much fun! And alas we did run out of time to finish up the last 2 courses before Downton. We ate our dessert; the Treacle Tart, which by the way was wonderful, while we watched Downton and then had the cheese after the show.

So I wanted to post the menu with the wines which we paired for each course:

1. Appetizer: by Aletha, wine is Sherry.
2. Soup: Potato Leek Soup; wine Hungry Hollow 2010 Gewürztraminer
3. Poached Salmon with a Mousseline Sauce; (As served on the last meal from Titanic 1^st Class menu, April 14, 1912); wine- Baletto Winery Pinot Gris
4. Roasted Chicken au Jus; wine- Iron Horse 2011 Russian River Pinot Noir
5. Wine Jelly- this is made with an entire bottle of Zinfandel wine.
6. Roasted Beef with Potatoes and Green Beans; wine – Beaulieu Vineyard (BV) 1995 Georges De Latour Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
7. Salad: Asparagus with a Mustard Vinaigrette Dressing
8. Desserts: Treacle Tart as per Season 3, Episode 1 and Rice Pudding; wine- Iron Horse Classic Vintage Brut 2006 Champagne & Iron Horse Brut “X” 2007 Champagne
9. Cheese: Various Cheese selections; Pimms

We did not serve large portions so people were pleasantly full I believe, but I for one did not eat any cheese. By then I’d had smelled enough food and eaten enough for one day.

Making the Wine Jelly

Daisy

Dinner is served

During dinner we did receive a telegram, via a text message from my good friend John who we’d invited. The telegram read “ss titanic struck iceberg and sunk STOP 1549 souls perished STOP sir John lost at sea STOP his  last words were ‘darn now I won’t inherit Downton Abbey STOP’”. So alas our friend John was unable to join the party.

Downton Dinner Party

Polishing Silver

The table is nearly ready

A Table Setting

Wine Jelly

What a long day! I wanted to write last night but finally at 2am we just simply fell asleep, but hardly could stop laughing by then.

The goal yesterday was to polish the silver flatware and service, purchase food, set the table and decide and make some of the foods. Nearly everything got done. We will just pick up some flowers today, finish cooking and Dale will pick up a few things we didn’t have time to get yesterday.

So here is the long anticipated menu:

1. Appetizer: by Aletha, wine is Sherry and maybe a little Port.
2. Soup: Potato Leek Soup; wine Gewürztraminer
3. Poached Salmon with a Mousseline Sauce; (As served on the last meal from Titanic 1^st Class menu, April 14, 1912); wine- Pinot Gris
4. Roasted Chicken au Jus; wine- Pinot Noir
5. Wine Jelly- this is made with an entire bottle of Zinfandel wine.
6. Roasted Beef with Potatoes and Green Beans; wine – Cabernet Sauvignon
7. Salad: Asparagus with a Mustard Vinaigrette Dressing
8. Cheese: Various Cheese selections; wine – Champagne
9. Desserts: Treacle Tart as per Season 3, Episode 1 and Rice Pudding; wine- Pimms and Port

Now we do know that we have 9 courses, have understood this for a couple of days. But reality hit us last night when making up a schedule for getting these dishes on the table. Most must be hot, served to each person, wine served and all in a timely manner. So when putting this all into a timetable we realized that we will only have 15 minutes for each course from start to finish as we are starting dinner at 7pm and Downton starts at 9pm. I know 15 minutes seems like a lot of time but we must go around the table to each of the 11 guests, let them serve themselves, sit down eat our course, get up and get the next one ready to serve.

Some courses will be quick, like the Wine Jelly, which by the way is really different. I made it last night and we had a taste. All I can say is it is different. But it might just be a nice change after all of the rich food before.

But what got us laughing is the thought (no offense to our guests who might read this) of telling our guests that they must eat, “stop talking, eat”  “No laughing, eat, quickly”! It should be quite an evening.

And now I’m off to get 2 chickens in the oven, will pre-roast then cut them up and warm them tonight. I’ll cook as much as I can this morning then maybe warm the Wine Jelly and drink it!

A Downton Dinner, Planning an 9 Course Meal

I’ve been working out of town since we returned from our backpacking trip so haven’t cooked or thought about food much until the last few days. I’ve just returned home this week and am quickly trying to get back into home life all the while preparing for a Downton dinner party. The difference between this party and our last one is that this party will be a party with friends dressed for dinner and lots of courses.

I’ve not had much time to do research but it looks like the dinner must consist of: 1. Appetizers, 2. soup, 3. roasted foul, 4. Wine jelly, 5. a meat with veges, 6. salad, 7. cheese, 8.dessert.  Trying to put this together has been a challenge as I’ve had no time, however we will get a simple dinner done.

A friend, Aletha will bring the Appetizers. For dessert, another friend, Ross, will bring Treacle Tart, mentioned in Season 3, Episode 1. Dolly will bring Rice Pudding.

I’ve spent time on planning the dinner tonight, again looking at all of the Downton Abbey food sites. Here is my thought: a Potato Leak soup, some sort of Salmon dish, Roasted Chicken au jus (remember when the cat got the roasted chicken?), Wine Jelly, Roast with Yorkshire Pudding and gravy, Asparagus salad with a mustard vinaigrette and then various cheeses.

We hated our dining room chairs so gave them away a year or so ago. Now we had no time to order any and even less money that we wanted to spend on chairs. We found some at Target, plain wood, nothing fancy. Dale just put them together and those will be what we use along with our dinette chairs.

It looks like we will have 11 people around the table. Most in costume.

I wanted to make a dress but unfortunately, just arriving home, there is no time. I found a layered dress that I’d bought years ago, made from a kind of sheer fabric that I’ll put over a longer skirt. I have a hat that is the main thing that I want to wear. The elastic is gone so I’ll need to repair it but hopefully can get it to work. We will buy a white shirt and white tie for Dale. He can wear that with his dinner jacket. He will look like a waiter!

My grandmother bought dishes I believe in about 1916 so we will use as many of those dishes as possible. Also, my mom has a bunch of collectible dishes that I’d hoped to see about selling for her. I think I’ll look thru those dishes tomorrow and see if we can use any for our dinner.

I’ll post photos as I can.