Dinner Party Recipes

Lee’s Homemade Salsa (restaurant style)

28 oz. can diced tomatoes
14 oz. can Rotel diced tomatoes with green chiles
Handful of fresh cilantro
5-6 jalapeno slices, more or less to taste (we use the Mt. Olive jarred jalapeno slices)
Salt, garlic powder and lime juice to taste

Pulse all ingredients together in food processor until smooth.

Guacamole (adapted from Kelly’s Korner)

5 avocados
4 roma tomatoes, diced
Half of a white onion, chopped
Handful of fresh cilantro
Juice of two limes
Salt

Put all ingredients together in a bowl and mash/stir/mix until you reach the desired consistency.

Southwestern Caesar Salad (adapted from Allison’s recipe)

Romaine lettuce (I also added in a bag of spring mix for a bit of darker green)
Two avocados, cubed
3 roma tomatoes, diced
Black bean and corn salsa
Tortilla strips

Toss all ingredients together and serve with creamy Caesar dressing.

Chicken Empanadas (via Carmen)

2-3 chicken breasts, diced
28 oz. can diced tomatoes with green chiles
½ onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic
Jalapenos to taste
Wonton or egg roll wrappers (can be found in produce/tofu section of grocery store)

Saute onion in olive oil, add garlic and jalapenos. Add chicken. Add tomatoes after chicken is halfway done. Finish cooking until chicken is done. Add small spoonful of chicken mixture to egg roll/wonton wrapper and close with a little egg/water mix. (Can be made ahead of time and stored in fridge overnight.) Fry in oil right before serving.

Alfajores (via Carmen)

Follow this recipe for the shortbread cookies. (I omitted the ground almonds.) Instead of making the filling, I bought this stuff instead. You can find it in Spanish grocery stores, but make sure you get the dulce de leche flavor. (I found it helpful to print out a pic of the can and ask someone to help me find it, otherwise I would have been looking all day.) Or, you could just make the filling according to the recipe. Then, just make sandwiches using the cookies and filling and sprinkle with powdered sugar. They are ahhh-mazing!

If you decide to try out any of the recipes, let me know how they turn out!

Spring Dinner Party

We hosted a dinner party at our house Saturday night to celebrate the engagement of our friends Stephanie and Tyler, and because it had been way too long since we’d all seen each other.

We decided on a Mexican/Latin theme for the food and I went with a fresh green and white Spring tablescape. I loved how it turned out:

Inspired by Layla’s spring mantle, Lee and I hit up the flea market several weeks ago in search of some pitchers to spray paint white. We found two at good prices and snagged them. The spray painting didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped (there were a few runs because of the shape of the pitchers) and one of the pitchers actually has a small hole in it, but all in all they look pretty good as part of a centerpiece.

I added in two beverage bottles from Ikea, as well as two small $0.79 Ikea vases and filled them all with bells of Ireland, snapdragons, fuji mums and mini carnations that I picked up at Fresh Market. At each place setting I added a green napkin from Ikea and a few carnation heads.

Steph, Tyler, Chrissy and Mike arrived around 2:00 and we started in on the spiked lemonade and lethal rum punch. By 3:30 this was happening:

There was lots of girl talk in the hammock:

And these two pups had pretty much the best day of their lives together:

Then it was time for food! (And Sara arrived after putting in a long day’s work.)

We snacked on chips with homemade guac, queso and homemade salsa.

Then dinner consisted of chicken empanadas and southwestern Caesar salad.

We were a fat, happy bunch:

Dessert was a cake that Chrissy made (that I forgot to get a picture of) and these out-of-this-world little Peruvian cookies called alfajores:

The girls retired upstairs for more girl talk and a fabulous spontaneous Glee dance party. I don’t have pictures of this portion of the night, and you should thank me for that.

We all fell asleep in the living room at 11:00. That’s how we do it folks. We like to keep it CrAzY up in here.

Seriously though, it was an awesome afternoon and evening and it was so great to catch up with my girls. Must do it again, and sooner rather than later.

(A few people have asked for recipes, so I’ll try to get those up in a separate post.)

Productive Weekend

1. Baby Brevyn = snuggled

2. Flowers and two vegetable gardens = planted

3. 5 loads of laundry = done

4. Phase 2 of Spring Cleaning = done

5. Trip to Tractor Supply Co. where a baby duck crapped on Lee = completed

6. New hammock = hung

Quote of the weekend:

Lee and I are lying in the new hammock, taking a break from a long day. It's quiet, the sun is setting, the weather is perfect. He squeezes me close and says:

"Your hair smells nice."

Pause.

"It smells like McCall's." (McCall's is a country buffet restaurant back home.)

Now, to explain, we had been cooking BBQ beef in the crock pot all day, so he was just pointing out that my hair smelled like BBQ beef.

Gee, thanks. Way to ruin the moment.

Sweet Baby Brevyn

She's finally here!

Brevyn Joy Harrison

Born 4/9/10, 3:03 am

10 lbs, 3 oz

Britt is doing well and Heith couldn't be a prouder papa (and husband).

I can't even HANDLE those cheeks.

Mid-yawn.

She is perfect. I can't wait to be able to squeeze those cheeks again.

Congrats Britt and Heith!

Sugar Says...

Happy Easter!

The Difference Between Men and Women

I found something when cleaning out my office that I just had to share.

I finally went through the exercise of going through and throwing out all of the leftover wedding paraphernalia and documentation. We're talking lists and spreadsheets and receipts and contracts and timelines. You can't even IMAGINE how many lists I made during the wedding planning process. We're talking Excel sheets that were pages and pages long. I snapped a few pictures of the madness:





And then I found this. My husband's "to do" list for our wedding:



A crumpled up post-it note with a total of 6 items on it.

This was what he had to worry about for our wedding.

At least he knew it was important enough that he needed to write it down.

And, I can safely say, this is a pretty accurate representation of how our life functions today.

Me with 8,000 to do lists and Lee with a post-it note of what he needs to buy at Lowe's.

Office Project Numero Uno: Worktable

After realizing that I didn’t want to spend more than about $30 on a worktable for my office, and realizing that $30 will barely by you one leg of a table, I found this beauty in the Dairy Barn on our family farm and decided to make her mine:



Once we got her home we realized she was in pretty rough condition. Lee got to work sanding the table down and cut off a few inches of each leg because they were dry-rotted a bit at the bottom. One whole leg had to be replaced completely, but Lee made one to match almost perfectly.

Even with sanding though, the top of the table still had a layer of grime on it. You see, the Dairy Barn was not used for the purpose you would think – milking cows – at least not since I’ve been alive. It was used for cooking greasy delicious meals of greasy BBQ, fried fish, BBQ chicken, fish stew and greasy hushpuppies. And the table still held a bit of that deliciousness from every one of those meals:



(The left side is the original table top, the right side is sanded with still a bit of grime hanging around.)

I didn’t necessarily want a film of grease on my worktable, so what do to? Enter: the pressure washer.

These days, Lee’s answer for everything is the pressure washer, and I have to say it worked miracles. Ten minutes later, grime was gone and it was time to move on to painting and sealing.

The bottom legs got a fresh white coat of paint and the top was left as natural wood with about 20 coats of Deft sealant.

So here she is now:





Not bad for the cost of a can of Deft, huh? (We already had the white paint lying around.)

Although most of our furniture is more contemporary, I’m finding myself drawn more and more to the vintage / farmhouse / cottage look. I was a bit worried about mixing the two styles but I think everything is going to come together nicely. Fingers crossed.