Merry and Bright

In keeping with annual tradition, despite having just survived a 15 hour flight home from Thailand, friends and family gathered today at my house for cookie decorating.  There was eating, drinking, and merriment making.  I love catching up with friends from far away and having a house full of my favorite people spending a relaxing afternoon together.  

Mom is all smiles:

Leslie learns to make burekas:

Overcome with the Christmas spirit of giving, I'm sharing the recipe below:

Burekas

1 package of puff pastry sheets

8 oz farmers cheese

3 Tbs crumbled feta cheese

4 Tbs grated mozzarella

2 eggs (one for the filling mixture, one for "gluing" the pockets and to brush on top)

2-3 Tbs sesame seeds

Thaw the pastry sheets as directed on the package.  Prepare the filling by combining all 3 cheeses and 1 egg.  Unfold each pastry sheet on a lightly floured surface and roll out to about half the original thickness. Cut each sheet into 12 squares of equal size.  Fill each square with about 1 tsp of the cheese mixture.  Brush the edges of each square with egg and fold over dough to form a triangle, pinch closed with your fingers. Arrange on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.  Brush the top of each pocket with egg and sprinkle with a pinch of sesame seeds. Bake for 15-20 minutes in an oven that's been preheated to 400 degrees.  Best hot out of the oven, enjoy!

It was a serious productions of rolling, cutting, baking and decorating. Don't worry we saved some cookies for you:

  

Beyond a shadow of a doubt

Yes, there's a reason why I've been lurking instead of headlining here...a bonafide baby sugar-bun in the oven! After many years of wishing and hoping, our 2nd miracle has occurred...a baby sister is finally on her way. It's amazing how different a second pregnancy is from the first. There sure is a lot less time spent focusing on the details. Hope this babe doesn't mind missing out on a having a pregnancy journal, I haven't started it yet and we're past halfway to delivery...sigh! Well, there it is. Now, back to nesting...
xoxo,
Big sister

What I'm Wearing

Savion Glover Performance at Palace of Fine Arts Theatre

Dress:  Borrowed from Kendra

Boots:  Nordstrom

Runner up, this one will have to wait until the next time I need a fancy outfit

Dress:  Borrowed from Kendra

Boots:  Nordstrom

Dorado Schmitt & the Django All-Stars Concert at the Herbst Theatre

Top:  J.Crew

Pants:  Gap

Shoes:  Banana Republic

Phantom of the Opera Las Vegas

Sweater:  Banana Republic

Skirt:  Anthropologie

Oranges

Seems like I'm loving everything orange these days.  Food, flowers, accessories, you name it!

Here's a beautiful, fun hat found at Anthropologie:

Gorgeous gladioluses from the farmers market:

Holiday floral display at Caesars Palace:

And a Thanksgiving staple, pumpkin pie with whipped cream:

Holiday Crafting

Christmas window displays around the City have inspired me!  Here is one of my recent creations.  I think one year we should have a rule that all gifts have to be homemade.  What do you think?!

Fall Soups

There's a crispness in the air and what better way to cozy up to the new colder weather than with a hot bowl of soup.  Here's one I adapted from an old Williams Sonoma Thanksgiving cookbook:

Butternut Squash Chowder

Ingredients:

• 1 yellow onion, diced
• 1 tsp. chopped fresh sage, plus small sage leaves for garnish
• 3 tsp. kosher salt, plus more, to taste
• 1/2 tsp. freshly ground pepper, plus more, to taste
• 2 russet potatoes, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 3 cups vegetable broth
• 32 oz. pureed butternut squash
• 1/2 cup skim milk

Directions:

In a large Dutch oven over medium heat, cook the onion, chopped sage, salt and pepper, stirring occasionally, just until the onions are soft, 5 to 6 minutes.  Stir in the potatoes, cover and cook, stirring occasionally, for 3 minutes.

Add the wine and simmer, stirring to scrape up the browned bits, for 1 to 2 minutes.  Add the broth and bring just to a boil.  Reduce the heat to low and gently simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 12 minutes.

Add the butternut squash puree and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in the milk and adjust the seasonings with salt and pepper.

Ladle the chowder into warmed bowls and garnish with sage leaves.  Serve immediately.  Serves 6 to 8.

On Inspiration

I was over at Chinese Grandma today, a fantastic blog about my favorite things: children, food, and musing about life, when I came across a passage that really spoke to me. It was part of a speech that Elizabeth Gilbert, author of "Eat, Pray, Love" gave at the TED conference in 2009 on being a writer and where the inspiration to write great things comes from. She didn't totally identify with this poet's description of the way inspiration came to her but I did! Do you?



Kauai, HI


"I had this encounter recently where I met the extraordinary American poet Ruth Stone, who’s now in her 90s, but she’s been a poet her entire life and she told me that when she was growing up in rural Virginia, she would be out working in the fields, and she said she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. And she said it was like a thunderous train of air. And it would come barreling down at her over the landscape. And she felt it coming, because it would shake the earth under her feet. She knew that she had only one thing to do at that point, and that was to, in her words, “run like hell.” And she would run like hell to the house and she would be getting chased by this poem, and the whole deal was that she had to get to a piece of paper and a pencil fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page. And other times she wouldn’t be fast enough, so she’d be running and running and running, and she wouldn’t get to the house and the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it and she said it would continue on across the landscape, looking, as she put it “for another poet.” And then there were these times — this is the piece I never forgot — she said that there were moments where she would almost miss it, right? So, she’s running to the house and she’s looking for the paper and the poem passes through her, and she grabs a pencil just as it’s going through her, and then she said, it was like she would reach out with her other hand and she would catch it. She would catch the poem by its tail, and she would pull it backwards into her body as she was transcribing on the page. And in these instances, the poem would come up on the page perfect and intact but backwards, from the last word to the first."

You can check out more great posts from Chinese Grandma here and read the entire transcript here.
Hope you have an inspired Wednesday!