Inauguration Feast

I'm late with this post due to the food coma I have been in since the party :o)
Here it is......

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Happy Inauguration Weekend!!!!!!!

To say that we are delighted about the second inauguration for Barack Obama would be an understatement. We are ECSTATIC!!!! So much in fact, that we have decided to lay on the exact inauguration luncheon that will be served to over 200 people at the January 21st event. We are doing our luncheon today as it is a Sunday and I have time to cook like a mad woman :o) plus, I will want to be watching the inauguration tomorrow instead of standing at the stove.

So, we have invited a few of our friends over to join us who are also all chipping in on finding the exact ingredients, including the wines, as well as making some of the dishes offered. There are 3 courses to the official luncheon. We are offering only 2 - the first course and dessert course (doing the buffalo course is just too much for our luncheon so we will have that on it's own at a later date).

Here is the official menu:
(I have also included the official photos of what the dishes are supposed to look like. We will see how we do with our attempts at reproducing this).

President Obama's 2013 Inaugural Luncheon Menu

First 

Steamed Lobster

with New England Clam Chowder Sauce

Served on Sauteed Spinach 

with Sweet Potato Hay

Wine:  Tierce 2009 Finger Lakes Dry Riesling (NY)

Main 

Hickory Grilled Bison

with Wild Huckleberry Reduction

Strawberry Preserve and Red Cabbage
 

Red Potato Horseradish Cake

Baby Golden Beets and Green Beans

Butternut Squash Purée 

Wine: Bedell Cellars 2009 Merlot (Long Island, NY)

Dessert

Hudson Valley Apple Pie with Sour Cream Ice Cream

with Maple Caramel Sauce

Aged Cheeses and Honeycomb

Toma Celena and Jersey Girl Colby,  
Cooperstown Cheese Company (Milford, NY)

Wine:  Korbel Natural, Special Inaugural Cuvée Champagne (California)

 Go here for the recipes: http://www.inaugural.senate.gov/luncheon/menus

The table was set with our finest antique white lace tablecloth and all sorts of political party favors like inauguration buttons, Obama million dollar bills and the Obama bobble head figure (no pun intended :o) we picked up at his last inauguration in 2009.

Preparing the first course: The clam chowder has a variety of vegetables, so the first task was to chop, chop, chop and then chop some more.

Getting the clam boil ready with shallot, white wine, garlic and fish stock

That yummy bowl of clam meat ready to go into the chowder.

OK, so this dish is not for the fainthearted.....literally! There is lots of heavy cream (none of that low fat stuff), the clam liquid, sauteed vegetables, etc. this is all reduced down before you add the clams and fresh tarragon.

 

The yummy end result is just TO DIE FOR!!! A huge pot of comfort and love :o)

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door...........the guest of honor, including his glowing personality, had arrived! :o)

The rest of the guests were also at the door. We couldn't wait to have our photo taken with the Prez.

The next order of business for getting the first course ready was cooking the lobster tails.

The lobster tails go into a large stock pot........

Next, the cooking stock is prepared using 1 gallon of water, kosher salt, white wine, star anise, diced carrot, celery, onion & leek. All this comes to a boil and is then poured over the lobster tails in the other pot and allowed to steam for 6-10 minutes.

The hot liquid is then poured off and the tails are thrown into an ice bath to stop the cooking.

Releasing the tails from their shells.

YUM!!!!

Preparing the sauteed spinach with shallot, olive oil and salt & pepper.

Plating the first course: Spinach first, then lobster tail cut into 5-6 pieces. Ladle chowder over spinach & lobster........

..........top off with sweet potato hay and a sprinkle of fresh tarragon. I didn't take photos of making the sweet potato hay, but all it is is about 4 cups of canola oil in a heavy pan heated to deep frying temperature, then shredding some sweet potato on a thin grater and throwing it into the hot fat. It produces a delicious  crunchy sweet potato hay. This is so delicious it will knock your socks off!

We all had a champagne (and beer) toast to Barry before we went to the table for our first course.

It all looked so beautiful on the table. Just like we were in DC at the luncheon.

Barry was the first to the table :o)

Nowana and Sally with The Prez.

Our next course was dessert. Nowana made the DELICIOUS Hudson Valley Apple Pie with Sour Cream Ice Cream and the maple caramel sauce all from scratch too. It was unbelievably rich and delicious. We even had the cheese and honeycomb with it.

Another toast to this great day, great food, 4 more years and our president.

One last photo of me with #44 - President Barack Obama! We are so glad he could make it to our party. We know how busy he is :o)

Now, it is definitely time to get to the gym!

Into The Frying Pan

We have to share a couple of photos of our first egg from our hen Nugget being cooked up for breakfast. We gave that egg to our friends Bob & Kris as a wedding gift to celebrate their life commitment to each other. We presented it to them in a little tin covered with hearts, the egg still warm from being laid.

Here is what Bob did with it the next morning:

 Steak & Eggs, YUM!!!! This is only the beginning........if we could get back to simple pleasures such as these, we could achieve whirled peas!!! hmmmmmm, we will make sure to grow some of those in are garden this spring too! :o)

Very Eggciting News!

So, our new year has started off with some very eggciting news. We woke up yesterday (1/12/13) to our hens making all sorts of new chicken noises and going in and out of the coop with much fanfare and excitement. We just knew something was up. Lo and behold, in the early afternoon we heard this tremendous clucking going on outside so we went running out and here is what we found:

It is all so very eggciting and tremendously fun. We feel like we have just had our first baby. Getting blue eggs is very common from the Easter Egger (Araucana) breed. Nugget was the first to lay and this morning we got another blue egg from Dumpling. 

Here are the girls out roosting in their run:

Let the scrambling begin :o)

Blizzard Up-date

December 27, 2012

Our 13 inches of snow has brought our town to a stand still. Looks like the past three years of drought just may be over. We haven't seen this much snow in one event since 2003. Hopefully this winter will be cold enough and snowy enough to get rid of all of the flying biting insects and crawly things that annoy us during the summer months (fingers crossed). State officials have called for emergency travel only today, so we decided to set out on foot to have a look at our snowy wonderland.
Our friend Ellen decided to ski over to see us. She didn't even have to come up the two front steps, the snow was deep enough she just came right up on the porch!

 Lulu just looked at us and said 'no way baby! I'm staying right here on the couch'!

 Our friend Sally stayed with us for two days until she could travel safely to her place just on the edge of town. We had fun walking around the neighborhood visiting friends.

Freeing Sally's car from the driveway was a workout. Thirteen inches of wet heavy snow was like going to the gym and lifting weights. We had about an 8ft x 10ft block to clear to get her car to the street. Of course the plow coming by to wall her in was EVIL! :o)

 December 28, 2012
 There has been another winter weather advisory issued for Indiana and the Ohio Valley tonight. We are expecting another 3 to 5 inches!  Looks like we will have the shovel workout again tomorrow. No worries though as we need to work off that Christmas pudding so we can move on to that box of chocolates! :o) This is one benefit of having to shovel snow........

HO! HO! HO!

We expect those piles of snow in front of the house are going to get even bigger by morning!

More coming in the next few days..............

B-Town Blizzard

This time the weather man was right! Yes, we are having a blizzard!

We woke up this morning and wondered how we were going to get to the chickens. So far we have over 10 inches of snow and we are expecting 4 to 8 inches more..........

 The girls are back here somewhere.......

 

 

Good thing we started getting the blizzard warnings yesterday. We covered the coop with plastic so it wouldn't fill with snow. Looks like it might have worked.

 We even have 4 inches of snow on our front porch! And, it is still coming down........

Sal found her car in the driveway, now if we can just find the road! Good thing she decided to stay here last night cuz I'm sure it would be about 3 days till we could find her out in the country where she lives.

It's a winter wonderland :o)  Ho! Ho! Ho!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS & WINTER SOLSTICE!

Let it snow! Let it snow! LET IT SNOW! 

As we went to bed last night the white stuff started falling. I ran outside to get a photo of our house, with Christmas lights for the first time since our remodel. 

 

 .........and, the first snow for the chicken coop too............(notice the chicken wreath with eggs attached. Our neighbor gave us this to help induce egg laying. We shall see if Santa brings us any for Christmas).

When we got up this morning, we had about 4 inches.............a great way to start the winter solstice.

When we went to let the chickens out of their coop, we discovered the snow had drifted to about 8 inches deep in their run (we had very high winds last night too). I opened the door to their sleeping quarters and they all looked outside, then at me like I was CRAZY to think they were coming out there. It was hilarious. It's the first time they have seen snow so I decided I would try to get some of it out of the run to see if they might be coaxed into coming out of the coop................

 .............No Way Baby! We are too chicken!!! :o)

As most of you know, today is also The End Of The World As We Know It, The Rapture, Dooms Day, etc., etc............we prefer to look at it as The New Awakening, and boy don't we need one in this world! We will be hosting a dinner tonight to celebrate. Hopefully we will all still be here tomorrow and with a new outlook on life. Fingers crossed! tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.............

10pm and Alex, Rowan and I are still here :o)

Happy Hoildays & Peace On Earth (please!)