Perfect fall meal!

I made the most unexpectedly delicious meal last night that was PERFECT for the new autumn weather.

Maple Syrup Pork Chops –  For these, I made them mostly according to the recipe, except I seasoned the chops with salt, pepper, cumin, and a little brown sugar before browning.  Also, mine were thin-ish, so I didn’t need the full 45 min in the oven (more like 30 min).

The sauce was amazing and so so easy. We already had maple syrup on hand (from NY, not VT, but it was still good!) luckily, otherwise this would be an annoyingly expensive purchase to make for one dish.  I HIGHLY recommend it, esp if you think you aren’t crazy about pork.

It paired perfectly with some mashed potatoes and Cauliflower with Bacon and Mushrooms.  The bacon went so well with the maple sauce.

I felt so strongly about the success of this meal that I wanted to make sure to share it with the world and urge you all to consider doing as I have done.

It got someone who doesn’t particularly care for pork, mushrooms, and cauliflower to admit that they were all delicious!

=D

Floral madness

Guess who already planned her flowers for the reception table centerpieces?  ME!  My mother just happens to be a collector of vintage bottles. (How cool is that?)  So going along with the rustic, messy feel, I wanted to have eclectic bouquets of wildflowers  in each bottle.  My mom is also growing zinnias for me to include as well.

I think I’ll include clusters of at least three bottles on a table.  Aren’t they nice? Flowers for 18 bottles cost $8!

My problem now is that I bought a bunch of birdcages on sale at Michael’s that I’m not sure what to do with … can i put little bird cages on the tables?  Or maybe I should move them all to the pie table … What about candles in mason jars like this?

I feel unfocused.  I have all these random ideas but am not sure how to put them together in a way that works …

Matt’s going to kill me for accumulating hundreds of empty jars in his studio apartment, but who cares — collect jars for me!

Reception site

When I began thinking about how I would approach planning this thing, I  wanted to get the reception and ceremony sites out of the way first.  This is especially because I have a smaller-than-average budget, so my options for sites will be very limited to begin with and will become continually more so as time goes on.

In order to book those places, you have to know approx. how many people you have to accommodate.  Matt and I roughed out a guest list, and we think we can be fairly brutal and keep the invitation list down to 200.

Here are my requirements for a reception site:

• Must accommodate up to 200 people.
• Must be cheap.
• Must be in NJ, somewhere north of Cherry Hill and South of Bergen County.
• Prefer a place where we can bring in our own food and booze.
• Really really prefer that it not be a hotel, country club, or anything overly fancy (which really is precluded by the most of the above).
• Prefer someplace outdoorsy but that also will work in the case of rain (do not want to rent a tent).
• WE NEED TO DANCE.

So I spent a week Googling sites in NJ for church picnics, company picnics, family reunions, and it was QUITE discouraging.  Most of these types of places have restrictions on the size of the party, requirements that we be out by sundown, no booze allowed, etc.

THEN I happened upon a solution right in my own backyard!  The Rutgers Gardens is a popular venue for ceremonies and receptions. Within the gardens is a log cabin and alumni pavilion.   They are non-profit, so the fees are reasonable, and they fulfill ALL of the above requirements (except maybe that we have to end the party by 9 pm and be out by 10pm).

As soon as I found out about it, I contacted the people there who told me that Saturdays fill up quick (there were only about 9 left for 2010!).  So Matt and I went down to check it out that day.

We fell in love and booked it right up!  See the pictures below. It’s perfect, aren’t we lucky?  It is the perfect setting for our rustic, outdoorsy, messy, fun, cheap, wedding celebration! Plus, because we’re alum, we even get a break on the price!  Plus it’s cute because we met there!

If it doesn’t rain, we’ll expand the decoration to have twinkle lights on the trees, garlands between the trees and hanging Japanese lanterns.  Plus lawn games in the recreation area!  It will be so beautiful!  Remember my Pollyanna bazaar inspiration??? I could hang prisms everywhere!

View from the recreation area. We can play lawn games here!

You can see the pavillion here from the recreation lawn.

Patio and pavillion. We can put extra tables here if it doesn’t rain!

Pavillion where most of the seating and the dance floor shall be. This is the main event. This will have lanterns and garlands EVERYWHERE.

View from the patio on the recreation lawn. We will play games here and decorate the trees.

Entrance to log cabin. The bathroom and kitchen are here.

This is the rainbow we saw on the way back to JC. It was a sign!

A New Beginning!

Guess what!

Matt and I got engaged a few weeks ago!  I’ve been semi-obsessively reading wedding blogs for months now, so I’ve known I wanted to start blogging about my own for a while.  As of now, we have a date (August 14, 2010), a reception site (Rutgers Log Cabin and Alumni Pavilion on Cook Campus), and that’s it!

Rather than boring my friends to death with all my problems and questions and dilemmas, a blog seems to be a more appropriate format.

The time immediately following our engagement night, I was just ecstatically happy.  Like every day was my best birthday ever and I just kept reaching to feel the ring to make sure it was still there and that this was really happening.  Now that I’ve been engaged for 3 weeks, I’ve matured into a more actualized woman (lady?), and I just feel content.  Certain anxieties and worries (not even related to marriage!) I had consumed myself with are now gone.  There are definitely still enough to spare, but I am just so excited and am overwhelmed by a sense of freedom.

I LOVE planning parties and hosting events, and I get to throw a big, expensive party and do WHATEVER I WANT.  I’ve been identifying all the traditional and expected elements of a wedding and picking/choosing what I want to do because it is meaningful or exciting to me (& him.  couldn’t forget him! heh heh), and what I couldn’t care less about and am opting out of.  Things falling into the latter category are: wedding cake, bouquet toss, elaborate centerpieces, expensive and crappy food, matching bridesmaids, wedding toasts, ball gowns, and basically anything that screams money for money’s sake.  That list will likely expand.  The theme of my wedding is messy/fun.

So, WELCOME to this new chapter in life and STAY TUNED (or else).  I am getting married to my best friend in the whole entire world!  Now back to Roseanne.  I’ll post stuff about engagement and the reception site very soon!

new food endeavors!

I followed instructions here and made my own pasta for the first time!  I was always intimidated by the prospect of this and thought i needed a machine or something, but NOPE!  It was easy as anything and soooo good.  Literally 2 ingredients. I didn’t even have a rolling pin, so I used an empty wine bottle!  I would follow the advice of one of the commenters and roll the dough into a tube after it’s rolled out and slice it that way.

The cutting is the most tedious part, and you definitely want to cut the noodles as thin as possible.  Also, I used three eggs (1 1/2 cups of flour to start) and it was enough for four huge servings.

Wouldn’t you think that you’ve explored all the options for cooking a potato that exist? You know, like you can mash, bake, roast, or grill them (I make potato packets for the grill out of foil and include onions, herbs, and dijon mustard). Well, think again, because I found two new ways! (I don’t count gratins or recipes that feature other main ingredients besides the potato).

Fondant potatoes from Bitten

And Hasselback potatoes from Seasaltwithfood.

What cool ideas to fancy up a potato if you’re entertaining (which I obviously am doing constantly)!!

i can’t wait to serve you water!

I just got the best tip from Kitchen Therapy.  Buy these bottles, drink them, and then save them for other various purposes! When I read the post, I wasn’t sure where I could pick them up or how much they would cost, but I figured that Garden of Eden probably would, and, indeed, there was a large display by the cash register.  They were only $3.99, so I got two!! Considering I will repurpose the bottles, that is not a bad deal.  I was amused by these suggestions on the web site.

I am going to save mine for decoration, to use as a vase, and also as a carafe for serving water at dinner.  I’m really starting to love vintage bottles.  Aren’t these from Etsy so cool??? Milk is the sunshine of life!

summa

As a follow up to a previous post, my Keds are AWESOME.  Comfy, cushiony, and simply attractive.

Here’s some lists:

Some Things I Love:

1. Sitting in the sun at lunch.
2. Riding my bike to get around JC.
3. TOMATO SEASON IS NEAR! All you need is salt and pepper for the most perfect snack ever.
4. Really good bagels.
5. Suspensful, psychological thrillers without a lot of gore.
6. Patchwork.

Some Things I Hate:

1. People wearing sunglasses indoors, esp on the subway.
2. Dogs off leash.
3. Driving into the city.
4. Toenails and clipping nails in public, which happens a lot more than you probably think.
5. Family Guy.
6. $6 Bud Lites.
7. Going out anywhere that I have to get changed for.

Some Things I Just Don’t Get:

1. Why anyone would choose to sit 2 inches away from me while I’m waiting to meet someone outside the PATH while reading a book.  There was literally yards and yards of space for her to sit, but she chose to sit directly next to me.  I immediately thought she might be trying to pickpocket me.  I looked around and saw there were a million other places for her to sit, and got up to move, but Matt came, and he had seen the whole thing, luckily, so I didn’t have to describe it to him later.
2. Waiting in line to get into a bar.
3. American Idol.
4. Purses that cost more than $50.
5. Kelly Bensimon.

justified!

This article from yesterday’s NY Times was so relevant to my life!  I love love love Real Housewives of NYC, and I’m SO excited for the NJ version to air.  But I always have to defend myself  to Matt because he thinks it’s trash TV.  I insist there’s more to it than that.  The show isn’t worshipping these women, and I don’t watch it because I want to be like them.  I watch it because: a) It’s entertaining, and b) It’s interesting social commentary on a particular group of people.

And I think that, coming from this area, you can see little bits of people you know in the characters: relatives, relatives of boyfriends, people from high school.

Also, Simon and Alex are living in another universe.  I will NEVER get over the fact that their kids’ names are Francois and JOHAN! They live in BROOKLYN.

From the article:

“Everyone likes to judge,” said Jennifer O’Connell, executive vice president of Shed Media US, which produces the New York show. And Bravo makes that easy. Unlike most other reality shows, this one about “housewives” is not filmed on a set but during the women’s actual lives. And the episodes rely on cutaway shots showing the reactions of the real-real people in the women’s lives: the cringe of a child, the frown of a disapproving sales clerk, the sigh of an overworked nanny. The subjects may be rich, the shows suggest, but their lives aren’t necessarily desirable. And that may be the most recession-conscious message of all.

Andy Cohen, senior vice president for original programming and development at Bravo, described those reaction shots as “winks” to the audience. “I know more really, really smart people who watch these shows who are like, ‘I’m embarrassed to admit it,’ ” he said. “That wink is also something that allows a lot of people to feel like it’s O.K. to watch these women.”

what i do when left alone

There were layoffs at Matt’s work yesterday, so he was out all night bonding and drinking with co-workers (when he came home, he kept telling me that he “was a survivor!”).

Soooo, I made cauliflower curry.  I added lots of garlic and ginger, tripled the curry powder, used only cauliflower and no broccoli, used light coconut milk instead of regular milk (ew.), and also added a block of frozen spinach, for those of you who are wondering.

I also bought these for my feet this summer.

Aren’t they clean, cool, and classic like the web site says?  I haven’t had Keds since elementary school.  I also am getting really good at remembering to search for coupon codes before purchasing online so that I can get a discount or at least free shipping.  I think they will look especially good with shorts.

I also bought this poster for my kitchen.  How perfect is it???

It was only $4.50 at Touch of Europe!!  Yes, that’s right.  Don’t we all want a little touch of Europe in our kitchens? Basically, this poster embodies who I am as a person  (my dreams, my goals, my internal make-up).

I also read wedding blogs and advice columns for the most of the night while watching the Food Network and then Sean Hannity when the Food Network Challenge came on (I don’t care about cakes!).

reccommendations

Two things: A quick, easy breakfast:  Scramble two eggs slowly. Fold in diced tomatoes and dot with goat cheese. Use plenty of salt and pepper. So good!

Also, this is really funny.  (Obviously not ALL pregnant women  are smug.)