Party Food

simple. easy. delicious.

by Patricia on September 1, 2010 · 4 comments

marinated feta

It doesn’t get much easier than this: marinated feta. I first saw marinated feta on my friend Kristen’s blog Passion 4 Eating back in January, and now I am hooked. I eat it in sandwiches, crumbled onto pasta, atop burgers, with hunks of baguette, and sometimes just straight from the jar.
[Continue reading...]

{ 4 comments }

homemade hummus

by Patricia on July 25, 2010 · 6 comments

hummus

[I don't want to read all this mumbo jumbo, take me to the recipe]

Can you believe it is almost August? Eep. Where has the summer gone? Even without all the E’s, the last few months have been pretty busy around here. At least it feels like it has been really busy, but I can’t really say what I’ve been doing. Okay, fine… I’ve been spending way too much time at Ikea. There I said it. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, lots of great stuff for organizing for not too much money. On the other hand, I worry that my house will start looking too Ikea, you know? Ah well. The damage is done.
[Continue reading...]

{ 6 comments }

bourbon glazed wings

by Patricia on January 26, 2010 · 10 comments

bourbon glazed wings

It’s that time of year again. You know, when even those who don’t follow football perk up at the mention of a Super Bowl Party. All of a sudden everyone’s got a favorite team. Or not. Football is just the excuse. The party is really about friends and the food. Actually, that’s really what life is about isn’t it? Good friends and good food… but I digress. We’re here to talk about the Super Bowl football food. What says football better than wings?
[Continue reading...]

{ 10 comments }

I have never been a pickle lover. That is to say, I like pickles but I have never loved them. When a dill spear comes along side a sandwich at a deli, I often leave it untouched. But sometimes I do like a pickle or two on my hamburger. Given my lukewarm feelings about pickles, I’ve found it a bit odd that I have a mounting obsession around the art of pickle making… and the many varieties of pickles to be made. It started with the bread and butter pickles which to me were as much about canning as they were about pickling. But the success of those homemade pickles went to my head, and has lead to visions of fruit pickles, Asian pickles, watermelon rind pickles… all dancing around in my mind for a couple of months now. So I’ve gone about collecting pickle recipes and ideas from books and blogs and have tucked them away for the right moment. Pickled grapes with cinnamon and black pepper is one such recipe. It sounded just odd enough that I had to try it. The recipe comes from A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg (I’m sure I’ve said this before, but it’s worth mentioning again that A Homemade Life is a wonderful book).

grapes

So when I stumbled upon these lovely red seedless grapes at the farmers’ market, I knew what I had to do. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was getting myself into but I was excited just the same. Between the description from Molly in her book and the write up by Deb from Smitten Kitchen I knew they had to be good. (I mean, if Molly served them at her wedding, they have to be good… right?). Too impatient to wait eight hours, I tasted the grapes as soon as the brine went on… just to get an idea of how the flavors came together. And even though the grapes had not yet soaked in any of the vinegary tartness, I could tell it was going to be anything but boring.
[Continue reading...]

{ 6 comments }

A light dinner: melon and prosciutto

by Patricia on July 20, 2009 · 3 comments

melon and prosciutto

The other day it was so hot that I did not want anything warm to eat so I sent out a tweet “What is your favorite heat-wave meal?”  I got a few responses, but the one that stood out was from Scott aka Seattle Food Geek: “My fave is a platter of mozzarella, tomato, basil, melon, prosciutto, bread, w/olive oil, + a bottle of Riesling.”

Why didn’t I think of that? It’s something we’ve had before, but somehow I couldn’t come up with anything beyond “cold. no-cook. cold…” (it was hot, people). Anyway, just because I couldn’t think of it myself, doesn’t mean I couldn’t eat it.  So Dan and I made a meal of caprese salad and melon with prosciutto… a little baguette and good olive oil on the side. Perfect, light meal.

{ 3 comments }