food I love I love food

Hey beautiful people!

The sky is a lovely stripy orange and purple as the sun sets over Portland Oregon, which is just perfect for this particular blog entry. It's the day after valentine's day, so anything that's near red on the color wheel is on my mind today. (Not that that's an unusual thing....) There are some recent culinary events in my family that fit into this theme, so here we go....

First I will start with the lovely flaky blood orange tart I made yesterday which was totally worth the two hours I spent on it. If I were a more experienced baker, I probably could have cut that time down, but I tend to spend most of my cooking time on the savory end of the food spectrum. I found the tantalizing recipe in last month's issue of Food and Wine Magazine, and if you click here you can see it for yourself in their great online compendium that I have been using a lot lately. In the interest of full disclosure, I am fairly new to the notion of food magazines, but my friends Nancy and Leah were so thoughtful as to induct me into this exciting world of temptation for my 40th birthday last year. Being a visual person, the color pictures are usually what drives me to make something, and that was definitely the case here. The best part was the salty caramel sauce you make for it that is an amazing counterpoint to the blood oranges.

My mother and her soon-to-be-hubby William have a really sweet tradition of making an all-red meal every year on Valentine's Day. I begged her to photodocument what they ate this year so I could include it in the blog. (Thanks Blanche!)
Wish I coulda been there for this amazing meal, but I'll just have to drool over the pictures:

the "Juliet and Romeo" cocktail--recipe was published in a recent Chicago Tribune. (Not the New York Times as previously stated.) Can't access that recipe online, but known ingredients are: Hendricks gin, rose water, cucumber juice, garnished with a sprig of mint and a rose petal. (See comments section of this entry for more information)


Salad of beets in vinaigrette on radicchio leaves


Beef Carpaccio w/ sun dried tomatoes on a baguette + a little horseradish dyed w/ beet juice


Main course--lobster!!! (from Connecticut)


Dessert was meringue puffs topped with a sour cherry sauce and Katherine Hepburn’s Brownies.


One of my favorite family traditions is a book my mother keeps where she records memorable meals. The basic routine is to write down the menu in detail, and who was present at the meal.