City Girl, Country Boy

Last Friday I stepped off a plane from New York and headed to the country to process a deer. Talk about two extremes. One minute I was discussing what Italian fabrics would be used in the upcoming Spring line and the next minute I am running a meat grinder. The Househusband and I love traveling, trying new restaurants, having a mall within 5 minutes of us, and all of the general perks that come with living close to the city. But growing up in the country, we also love small towns and wide open spaces.

Recently, we have done a lot of research regarding the foods we eat and where our food comes from. I have gone through a large stack of food memoirs in the last year and can't get enough of them. Through our research we have become very interested in eating locally and in season. This has opened a world of new recipes and foods to us. Last summer, my aunt gave my dad several seeds for squash of varieties we had never heard of including Candy Roaster, Chicago Warted Hubbard, and New England Sugar Pies. As the summer progressed and these strange vegetables began to ripen in our garden, we had to figure out what the heck to do with them. My mom and I launched into squash research that led us to squash pie. Squash pie is basically like pumpkin pie, but much creamier. With some of the squash we cubed it and roasted it in a pan, we grilled some of it, made some into soup, and pureed and froze the remainder. The previous fall if I would've walked through a farmer's market and seen a Chicago Warted Hubbard, I would've had no idea what to do with it. Now, I can't imagine growing a garden without it.

Our biggest change in what we eat has been meat. I cannot feel good about eating meat that was produced using antibiotics, growth hormones, and raised inhumanely. We definately don't have the budget to buy all of our meat from Whole Foods, so we started thinking of other ways we could buy meat. My Dad has been an avid hunter for years and always has a freezer stocked full of wild game. We have found we can incorporate a lot of the dishes we used ground beef for with elk or venison. The Househusband has processed a total of three deer this year and our freezer is stocked with roasts, ground venison, hamburgers, and steaks. We are saving a lot of money and we know where our meat is coming from, the great outdoors!

Below is the recipe for squash pie. You can use any winter squash pureed for this recipe but we like the Chicago Warted Hubbard the best!

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2 cups pureed squash (can be frozen)
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
3 large eggs
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 unbaked 9 in pastry crust

Refrigerate dough 1 hour before rolling. Transfer to a 9 in pie plate and crimp and shape the edges. Cover and chill for at least one hour before filling. Set rack to lowest position. Combine the puree with the brown sugar, eggs, cream, spices, and salt and whisk until smooth. Pour into the pie shell and bake until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean about 50-60 minutes. Cool. Serves 8.

Super Bowl!

A crazy travel schedule with my real job has kept me from blogging lately! In between the trips and trying to grow onions from seeds(more about that in a future blog), I have also been planning my next party. Super Bowl! This is really where the Househusband shines. We hosted a Super Bowl party last year that included some wonderful food and fun games. So far I know he has a burger bar planned and some great dips. I am planning a ice cream bar for dessert and have asked guests to bring their favorite ice cream toppings to the party. Below is the invitation.

A note on proofreading: We are inviting our friends from church to this party and I sent out a message on Facebook asking if they had plans for Super Bowel. We had a good laugh and luckily it didn't make it to the invitation!

Christmas Tea

I thought I would share some pictures from some past parties. One event I get to be a part of every year and always looks forward to is the Christmas Tea at Ramsey Creek Baptist Church. Ramsey Creek is a small country church in Clarksville, MO and is the church I was raised in and my family still attends. Being a very small church, I know everyone there and every time I go back to visit I feel like I am home. There are some amazing cooks at this church. I have yet to attend a carry in dinner that rivals what the women at Ramsey Creek can put together.

For the past 15 years, Ramsey Creek has put on a Christmas Tea. There are usually about 25 tables and a hostess for each one. Each hostess decorates their table with their best dishes and invites guests to fill up each of the eight places at the table. Each guest is greeted with a table present, tea, and wonderful food prepared by a kitchen committee. This year we had lemon blueberry bread, chicken salad croissants, fruit, and fudge. Each year there is a speaker and a musician for entertainment. It is always the perfect occasion to get into the Christmas spirit! Below are some pictures from this past tea. Each table is so different and it is neat to see the different personalities represented in each table.

My table this year was purple and silver. I had found these fabulous mirror trees at the after Christmas sale at Target one year.

The table present I had for the ladies at my table was homemade caramels and peppermint fudge. I must take a moment to brag about my homemade chocolate covered caramels. There are amazing, but also very time consuming which is why they only come out once a year.

My mom decorated the table below with inspiration from a Pottery Barn table.

As previously mentioned, the woman can do amazing things with a napkin.

One of my favorite table's was Julie Lockard's. She is in charge of the decorations for the tea each year. For her table she had taken pieces of wood, covered them in olive oil and used them to serve off of. How clever is that? She had also made candles out of wood for the table presents.

I was lucky enough to have a table full of people I love. Paul's mom, grandma, aunts, my sister in law, and my brother's girlfriend were at my table. I know it is something they enjoy coming to every year and I equally enjoy preparing the table for them! 

Chili Cookoff!

The first party of the year was a success! We had 6 people and 3 chilis to try. The food was easy to throw together since most of the main dish was provided by the guests and the Househusband made ours :) For sides I serverd cornbread muffins, kettlecorn, deer sausage, and brownies. Decorations mostly consisted of tin cans I had saved from our canned goods, signs I had printed, ribbon, $4.50 worth of fabric, and of course the essential drink bucket.

The kettlecorn I bought was by Popcorn Indiana, so tasty!

We had a lot of fun coming up with the prizes. We had four different prizes, Best Chili, Gassiest (a can of beans), Most Unique (red pepper jelly), and Spiciest (Habanero Tabasco Sauce). Below are the winners and their prizes.

Each of the chili's were very different! The first place chili was made with andouille sausage and went great with cornbread. Another chili which won most unique, had grilled veggies in it and was served with crackers with peanut butter and honey on them. The Househusband really went crazy with his "Double E" Chili that consisted of elk and eggplant. Each of the guys did a great job and I can't wait to see what they come up with for next year!



The Real Househusband of St Louis

Thanks to the wonderful power of technology, I was able to work from home today and not brave the snowy roads. The highlight of my day were the homemade rolls my husband made. My husband has a job where he works from home so he is here a lot more than I am. He jokes that while I am off to the office or on a business trip, he is taking care of the home and being a stay at home dog dad. He is not the only one of his kind, he has a group of friends that also stay home and I hear of more and more men being the ones that are at home. He has dubbed himself as a Real Househusband of St Louis and is forming the cast for the next big reality show. (Watch out Real Housewives!) Between him and his friends, there are several seasons worth of material.

The Real Househusband is an amazing cook. While I have to follow a recipe exactly, he can take whatever we have in the kitchen and make something fabulous. Sunday he took a cooking class on how to prepare different cuts of meat. They made mini burgers with homemade buns which is where he got this new roll recipe from. Now while I have made major advances in the kitchen, I cannot get dough to rise to save my life. I will not consider myself a real woman until I have successfully defeated dough. You can imagine how ticked off I was when The Real Househusband tried it for the first time and made the most beautiful and tasty rolls pictured below. Until next time, I will continue my quest to make bread and enjoy the fruits of The Real Househusband of St Louis' labor.

Sneak Peek

My intentions for this past weekend were to spend a lot of time in my craft room preparing for our chili cookoff and our upcoming Superbowl party but a cold that I am determined not to get me down and a new baby in our family altered my plans a bit. While I did not welcome the cold, the Howard's did welcome the first baby in a long time into our family! My cousin Beth and her husband Jason had a baby girl on Saturday evening who is absolutely beautiful. I did manage to squeeze in some quaility time in my craft room to do some creative things. When we bought our house one of the requirements I had was a room that I could scrapbook in. Sadly I spend little time scrapbooking these days, but with a year of parties ahead I plan on spending a lot of time in this room. The room has some of my favorite things in it including cards friends have given me, a giraffe figure from Africa, pictures of my dog, and of course a couple of mustaches. I also love to watch horribley cheesey movies my husband would never agree to watch in my craft room. This weekend I knocked out The Notebook and Sweet Home Alabama. This room is definately my happy place.

I thought I would give a sneak peek of what I am planning for the chili cookoff. When I was thinking about the theme and decorations, a county fair and blue ribbons came to mind. So that is the theme I am playing off of. Below are some pictures of what I am using for the food. I am using a lot of metal pieces in the decorations so I have been saving cans to use to hold silverware, napkins, straws, and the votes. We also are putting together some fabulous ideas for prizes. Check back next Sunday to see how we put it all together!

Bella Lucy

Okay, another note regarding the nickname. It takes on several forms mostly dependent upon my location. For example, when I am in New York my mother calls me Big Apple Lucy, in Vegas I am Viva la Lucy (my personal fav).  After a trip to Italy this summer and a slight obsession with homemade pasta that followed, I took on the new nickname of Bella Lucy. Italy is by far my favorite place I have ever traveled to. My husband and I travelled there in October and during our trip visited Rome, Tuscany, Florence, and Venice. Tuscany was by far my favorite part of the trip. We decided to go the agritourism route and stayed at a beautiful place called Terrapille. Terrapille is just outside of Pienza a tiny town known for their pecorino, or sheep's cheese.

We fell in love with several different kinds of food but by far our favorite was the homemade noodles. When we got back home and had our first boxed pasta since Italy, we decided we needed to learn to make our own! I had always thought that homemade pasta would be really complicated and require a lot of equipment. My mom sent us to a fabulous couple's class at the Kitchen Conservatory (www.kitchenconservatory.com) called The Impastable Dream. That night we made pappardelle with shrimp and zucchini, tomato garlic and basil pasta, herbed ravioli with spinch ricotta mouse, and fettuccine with pancetta. The next morning we ran out to buy a pasta maker (which was under $40) so we could try it on our own! The only other necessary ingredient for making pasta is "00" flour which is very fine and used for pasta and pizza dough. Kitchen Conservatory sells it for $4.95 a package.

For our family's Christmas celebration we volunteered to make pasta for everyone which was quite the undertaking for 15 people! We rolled pasta for most of the day and used the clothes rack to dry the spaghetti.

Please note my husband's polka dot apron.

We made pumpkin ravioli, ricotta and sausage ravioli, and spaghetti with meat balls. It was delicious and we look forward to doing it again!

Party Essentials

There are some things I just couldn't host a party without and I literally use for every event. The first being a drink bucket. It not only looks super cute but it also allows guests to grab a drink whenever they want. I find myself thinking I need one in every color, shape, and size, but a basic metal one goes with everything.

Here is a picture from a couple's diaper shower I hosted for my friend. I set up a drink station on our buffet and filled the shelves with different glasses. The tub was filled with drinks and pitchers of mojitos and bottles of wine lined the top of the buffet.

The other thing I could not host a party without is a 3 tier stand. Again I find myself wanting these in every shape, size, and color but the basic glass ones we have work for every event. It adds height to the table and makes a beautiful display for what you are serving. Here is a picture of the stand at the same diaper shower as above with homemade chocolates on it.

Nothing is cuter than tiny cupcakes! Below is a picture from a baby shower at work. I filled the bottom two tiers with minature cupcakes and the top with a minature cake that matched the cupcakes.

Finally, and probably my favorite table I have ever set, is a picture of the tier from last Easter. More pics from Easter to follow on future posts!



New Year's Resolution!

Happy New Year everyone!  I am very excited about my New Year's resolution for 2011. One of my very favorite things to do is to plan and host parties. When one of my good friends and favorite people to plan parties with showed me a blog based around planning small parties it inspired my resolution. So I am going to host one party a month for a year and blog about it. So here's to a year of parties and the great memories and good times with friends that each one will bring!

For January we will be hosting a chili cookoff. With all the great cooks we know and all the variations of chili out there it is something we have been wanting to do for awhile. My husband is an excellent cook and chili is one of his specialties. I won't give away his secret recipe but when he serves the chili he pairs it with crackers with peanut butter and honey on top. Don't knock it until you try it, it is delicious! Below is a picture of the invitation for our first chili cookoff!