Posts Tagged ‘food/recipes’

valentine making party

On Friday all my kids’ friends came over for a valentines making party–yes all! have you ever had a party where every person you invited could come and then think holy crap! everyone is coming?  At the last minute a few kids couldn’t make it, so it wasn’t quite as chaotic as I thought it would be, but we are still picking glitter out of our hair (four days later).  The kids are still pretty young, so there weren’t any projects proper, it was a how many different things can you glue to one card sort of deal. My son’s inner glitter lover came out and he used up most of what we had.  Actually after the party was over my kids worked on their valentines almost until dinner time. They would get up from the table every once and a while and help themselves to the leftovers at the buffet. It was a rare day in motherhood where I was aloud to sit back, cuddle with the baby, and crochet as I please.

I got kinda themey with the food. It was supposed to be all heart shaped and red, but ended up rather brown and carby.  I made tomato focaccia from my bakery days and it was pretty good, at least the two dogs who finished it off thought so. These financiers were a total bust: they didn’t taste very good–and financiers are usually super delicious–and the heart effect was fussy as hell and didn’t work in the end.  Everything else was pretty run of the mill: heart shaped pb&js, red vegetables, trail mix. Martha’s raisin heart pockets were my favorite and I squirreled a few away to have with tea later.  I know valentines day is all about chocolateness, but these were nice and wintery, not too sweet and perfect with tea. I used golden raisins in the filling, but I think dried apricots with a little cardamom would be even better.  So go set up a little buffet for your kiddo’s lunch and open the glitter and savor some quiet time, or make some valentines yourself.  Next year we might skip the christmas cards all together and just send out valentines.

peach pie

peach and creme fraiche pie to be exact. It was made and already eaten–pie is just so good for breakfast. Though this pie wasn’t quite as good as I thought it would be. It was pretty damn tasty, don’t get me wrong, but the streusel didn’t really do it for me. There should have been more crunch to it. Next time I’ll add some chopped almonds or something else to give it more dimension. Because as it stands this pie is all creamy and softy peachy goodness, which sure as hell ain’t bad.

carrot cake cookies

We had a really lovely weekend. I pretended to know what I was doing in the garden while my kids made mud pies and my husband mowed the lawn. It doesn’t get more suburban than that. And it was awesome. We ate every meal outside, including these ridiculously awesome carrot cake cookies. The recipe says they make 18, but I only got a dozen, so double it because they are super delicious: not too sweet, but not too healthy either and small enough to eat too many without realizing it. And just the cure for when all your decorating decisions get totally panned (in the comments) on a popular website–who knew rug placement was such a hot button issue?