Posted in Pie, Recipes, tagged National Pie Day, Pie Recipes, Savvy Entertaining, Shanna Hatfield on January 23, 2014| Leave a Comment »
It’s National Pie Day!
A yummy hooray to that!
My dad always says he only likes two kinds of pie – hot and cold. So for all you pie lovers out there, here are a few of my favorite pie recipes.
Let’s start with a recipe for the flakiest, best pie crust.
Orange Dream Pie (great in the summer!)
She Who Will Be Making a Pie Today
Posted in Party Theme, tagged airplane party, Blog humor, party humor, Party Themes, Savvy Entertaining on January 21, 2014| Leave a Comment »
The madness all started with blue Jell-O.
Well, blue Jell-O with whipped topping mixed in, to be exact.
I saw this photo on Pinterest the other day. Someone wrote a description about how it would be the perfect dessert for an Airplane Party.
Okay. I get their basic thought about the clouds and blue sky, but seriously – what airline do they fly?
My idea of an airplane themed party would go something like this:
Instead of invitations, send a boarding pass. Make sure it states the boarding pass must be presented for entry and the gate (door) closes at a very specific time.
The day of your party, guests will arrive to find a large, scary-looking man at the end of your sidewalk demanding they remove their shoes, jewelry, wallets, cell phones, and empty their pockets and purses into plastic buckets, after making sure they have their boarding pass in hand. You can enlist your kids to carry the buckets inside the house and place them randomly in one room. Make sure your kids confiscate all food and beverages. If you want to make the party even more fun, have the kids knock over one or two buckets, ensuring the contents combine.
Once guests have surrendered all their personal belongings, line them up like criminal suspects outside your door where a second large, scary-looking man waves a metal detector over each one to make sure they aren’t fibbing about those empty pockets. He must also ask to see those boarding passes. Should anyone try to sneak through without one, they will be dragged back to their car and ordered to leave immediately. Make this ritual of boarding the plane even more fun by telling the scary man to work at the pace of a snail heavily medicated with sleeping pills. Oh, and you could also turn on the sprinkler by the door to liven things up, should anyone begin to look bored.
If and when the guests make it inside the house and actually find their shoes and valuables, escort them to a room where you have uncomfortable plastic chairs placed in two rows, back to back, not conducive to friendly conversations or idle chit-chat. Let your guests know the party will definitely start on time and to enjoy the wait.
Since you’ve had your kiddos appropriate all snacks and beverages from the guests’ personal belongings, let junior make a few bucks for one of his school projects by offering a handful of prepacked snacks and bottled drinks available for sale at extortionist pricing.
At whatever time you’ve printed on the boarding pass that the gates will close, lock all the doors to your house and close the blinds. If people you invited aren’t already inside, they didn’t really want to come. And the friend banging on the door with some excuse about having a flat-tire – just leave them standing outside, getting soaked by the sprinkler. There is no excuse for being late. Once gate is closed, it is closed.
Every fifteen to twenty minutes, announce to your guests that the party will begin soon, right on time. If anyone complains about the party being late to start, let them know that the gate had to close at least an hour before the party was ever planned to begin.
Once they’ve grown restless and despondent, announce that you are ready to begin seating for the party. Have those surly-faced guys from out front stand at the doorway to your dining room and enforce the seating chart you’ve so carefully arranged. The guests must once again present those boarding passes to be seated.
It is vital to the authenticity of your party to make sure you have at least five more chairs wedged around your dining room table than space could possibly accommodate. If there is any way to make sure at least one tiny person is nearly smothered between two larger people, you earn double hostess points.
As your guests look around the empty table, allow your kids to serve the meal – a choice of packaged peanuts, crackers, and bottled water, juice, or soda in the little 12-ounce sizes. If your guests would like anything resembling a meal or any other type of beverage, they will have to pay accordingly.
At intermittent moments, have your kids walk by with plastic ball bat and hit random guests on the elbow. This make certain they get that whole “seated on the aisle” experience.
After an hour of being trapped at the table, have those big scary guys rock the chairs the guests are seated in around a bit. You want to give them a little turbulence before the evening is through.
When you announce the party has ended, smile graciously and encourage everyone to come back again soon as they run, not walk, out the door.
Glance out the window and wave as they all stand around, trying to find their car keys. Consider it lost luggage.
Your kids can take out the pile of keys they collected earlier and dump them on the sidewalk. Make sure the scary guys pull your offspring back to safety before the free-for-all begins.
Pat yourself on the back for a great airplane party experience.
***
And that is how I envision an Airplane Party.
She Who Would Never Really Host A Party Like This (or ever, ever recommend it)
Posted in Recipes, Referrals, tagged national popcorn day, Popcorn, popcorn recipes, Savvy Entertaining, Shanna Hatfield on January 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Yesterday was National Popcorn Day. Hooray!
If, like me, you love popcorn, here are 100 fun popcorn recipes shared by Yellow Bliss Road.
Yum!
She Who Is Off to Pop Some
Posted in Captain Cavedweller, Easy Recipes, Main Dish, Recipes, tagged Baked Gnocchi, chicken recipes, Gnocchi, Savvy Entertaining, Shanna Hatfield on January 17, 2014| Leave a Comment »
The urge to make some creamy, cheesy gnocchi overtook me the other day. To up the ante, I added in chicken and bacon crumbles. That turned out to be a particularly delicious idea.
Captain Cavedweller isn’t a fan of gnocchi. He can’t seem to forget the one time I overcooked it and the results tasted something like paste, except not quite as good in flavor or texture.
When he saw what was on the menu for dinner, he started digging in the freezer to see if he could unearth a frozen pizza. I assured him, he would like this.
With a dubious expression on his face and a sigh of long-suffering escaping his lips, he sat down to eat.
And eat.
After he finished the second-helping, he made some mention that is “wasn’t too bad, for your weird food stuff.”
You can interpret that as he liked it.
This dish isn’t hard to make, just be sure you keep an eye on the gnocchi while it’s boiling. It seriously goes from tasty to nasty faster than you can blink.
Ingredients (don’t be like me and forget you are out of fresh Parmesan cheese and end up using your husband’s nasty stuff in a can.)
Start by frying a few strips of bacon, cut into small pieces.
Add in about a cup of cooked chicken, cut into small pieces (although mine appears to have been shredded by a wild animal.)
Remove chicken and bacon from pan and set aside. Leaving bacon drippings in the pan, add in butter, stirring as it melts. Put water on to boil in a heavy medium saucepan.
Add in flour and stir vigorously.
Add milk and cook until it starts to thicken, stirring frequently.
Add mozzarella and Parmesan cheese, stirring constantly. The pot of water should be boiling, so add in the gnocchi. It only needs to cook about three minutes, so keep an eye on it.
Stir in the cooked bacon and chicken.
Add cooked gnocchi and stir to coat, then spoon into a greased baking dish.
Bake at 375 degrees for about twenty minutes, until the top and edges of the gnocchi start to turn brown and crispy. Sprinkle mozzarella over the top and return to oven for a minute or two, until cheese melts. Remove and serve!
Baked Gnocchi with Chicken (and Bacon)
2 tbsp. butter
1 tbsp. flour
3/4 cup milk
1 cup mozzarella cheese (divided in half)
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese
3 strips bacon
1 cup cooked chicken
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Cut bacon into small pieces and fry in a heavy skillet (I used cast iron). Add in chicken just before the bacon is cooked, to absorb some of the great bacon-y flavor (and grease). Remove from pan and set aside.
Put water on to boil in a heavy medium saucepan for the gnocchi.
Drop the butter into the skillet with the bacon drippings and melt, then stir in flour. Add milk and continue stirring until mixture begins to thicken.
Add 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese and the Parmesan cheese, stirring until cheese melts.
Add gnocchi to boiling water and cook for about three minutes, following package directions.
Stir the bacon and chicken into the cream sauce until thoroughly heated.
Drain gnocchi and stir into sauce, making sure to coat all the little dumplings.
Spoon into a greased 8 x 8 inch baking pan and bake for about 20 minutes, until the edges of the gnocchi start to brown. Remove pan from oven and sprinkle remaining mozzarella cheese over the top. Return pan to oven and let bake just a minute or two, until the cheese melts.
Remove and serve!
She Who Should Have Salad for Dinner
Apple Pie Bites
Old Fashioned Apple Pie
Raspberry Cream Pie
Savvy Entertaining 