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Chicken Liver Paté
What’s your favorite part of the Thanksgiving table? I loved the holidays as a child. Holidays meant crazy Denver blizzards, Peter Paul and Mary on the record player, delicious flavors & bites of goodness and the parties we had with lovely friends. My parents had a knack for throwing great parties. My mom always set a beautiful table, sparkly candles were put out with the decorations, my dad readied the old bar with cocktail ingredients and bottles of wine, and I loved getting dressed up right before people arrived. There was such anticipation and joy over putting together a celebratory meal to share with people. Even the cuisine at those parties,…
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The Garden in Fall
Often by the time fall comes, especially late October and November I’m over the garden until spring. Hibernation has set in and I’m completely fine with that. I’m ready to hibernate too. But even during this season of dormancy it seems there is so much still happening in the garden. Fall is the perfect time to plant bulbs like tulips and daffodils, and my favorite, garlic. Because of my apathy towards the garden by this point I’m usually racing to get my garlic planted in October, digging quick holes and tossing the organic cloves in. Luckily this year I got it planted right before days of rain came so I…
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Homemade Orange Bitters
After our visit to Thistle, in McMinnville, a few years ago, I came home sort of obsessed with bitters and delicious craft cocktails. Apparently there was an entire craft cocktail revolution going on and it didn’t take me long to find the awesome book, Bitters, A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All with Cocktails, Recipes and Formulas, by Brad Thomas Parsons, which I’ve mentioned before in a post I wrote about My Perfect Manhattan. I bought the book for Greg because he’s really the cocktail guru in our house. It has wonderful cocktail recipes, fun history about bitters and great tips for using different bitters in drinks. But my favorite part…
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The Thistle
There are so many things I love about fall. It’s beautifully ironic to me that in a season typically full of death, decay, and hibernation, fall has always been so alive to me, so sensory with the bright infused leaf colors, the return of the rich green to our grass, wool slippers wrapped warm around my toes. My fingers spill over the yarns at the knitting store; I snuggle on the couch with my kiddos and escape into books. And the scents, oh the scents. Burning wood stoves perfuming the air, the crisp morning dew, chicken broth simmering on the range, yeasty beers at a football stadium, all the organic…
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Goodbye Summer!
Now that it’s officially over, I guess I have to say goodbye to summer. I love fall, but I just want to reminisce about what a gorgeous summer we had. It seemed to stretch on and on with all the amazing, warm, dry weather. I soaked up as much sun as I could. We traveled all over the country and our state, we had loads of silly fun with family and friends, enjoyed amazing food and drinks, and spent long, lazy days playing outside.
