Fourth of July Celebration

John Adams, writing of the remembrance of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, said, "It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more."

Small town parades!  Nothing like them!  Some of my favorite moments from our town's.

Then it was on to Walter's parents' home for a barbecue, some grandbaby cuddling, and luscious summertime desserts (none of which I can take credit for).

A torential rain on the drive home added a little extra fun to the day!

I think John Adams would approve of the "illuminations" at the end of the day.  Most festive!

Delightful Visit - Part II

More scenes from our recent touring with our visiting friends...

We toured America's oldest family farm.



Sadly, although it has been in the same family since 1632, the farm is for sale.  It was decidedly lacking in crops.

We visited a winery and had a wine tasting.  Their port was amazing...especially with dark chocolate.

The next day our friends wanted to visit some orchards that produce hard cider.  The views stretched for miles and the cider was quite tasty.





We passed some time at the Vermont Country Store, exploring the old, the tasty, and the wacky, as well as quiet time on their front porch.



The next day was the birthday of one of our guests.  We fulfilled her wish to "...do something adventurous.." by going hiking.



Then it was down the hill for a birthday dinner of pasta with garlic-cream sauce and grilled chicken, birthday cake, and late night fun with sparklers.  (In case you're wondering how I shot these pictures, I just set my camera on night mode and held very still.  People ran around and waved their sparklers, and this is what I captured.)  Very fun!



It was a great visit...all too short...but fabulous!  Gosh, I love these people!

Delightful Visit

If you see a sight like this in our front entry, it's a sure thing that friends from the west coast are here for a visit!  Gosh, I love these people!



They are THE BEST guests too...so cheerful, great conversationalists, fun-loving, adventurous.  AND we all love the Lord!  Can't get any better than that for a week of fellowship!

First stop was the beach, which just happened to be having a sand castle building competition.



Our guests enjoyed discovering that the east coast beaches have nice, smooth rocks to collect, as well as shells.



A contra dance was a delightful treat, since we often danced with these friends when we lived on the west coast.  Our friend even jumped in and joined the band for one song.



They were eager customers are Colette's farmers' market stand.



We toured an historic water-powered mill that makes dry measures, piggins, and Shaker boxes.





Technohubby and I (shown here) and our friends enjoyed a lovely dinner at an old New England Inn (c. 1789), and a slow stroll and some great conversation on the gravel sidewalks of the charming town afterwards.

More pictures coming tomorrow.

Hospitality for a Crowd - Part VI--Dinners

One of my favorite enjoyments in life is a good dinner with friends and family followed by long, lingering dinner conversation. I love to see the faces of those I love round the table, happy and enjoying each other and the food. What a blessing! To see 28 of our dearest for five days running…priceless!


Just the part of our crowd that was 22 yrs. and younger at the top of the falls in the Flume Gorge, Franconia State Park, NH.

Remember that my priority when we have guests is to enjoy them. And recall that when we had our crowd of houseguests, we were touring New England each day, so we were gone all day and there was precious time to prepare a nice meal. Yet I wanted to feed our guests a tasty dinner. Hours of touring every day meant that everyone was hungry when they got back to our house. Dinner had to be easy to prepare, yet delicious. Once again…advance planning, preparing ahead of time, and freezing made it all possible.


Our freezer full of food.  Most of this was gone by the time the last guests left.

Here are some dinner ideas that can be prepared ahead and frozen:

–Marinated Chicken for Grilling - Toss boneless, skinless chicken breasts in ziploc bags, pour in some Italian dressing, seal, and freeze. The dressing will marinate your chicken. Just thaw and grill.



–Sauces for Pasta

#1 – spaghetti sauce - your favorite homemade spaghetti sauce should freeze wonderfully; thaw; heat; serve over pasta.

#2 – bolognese sauce – delicious, hearty pasta sauce. I like Giada De Laurentiis’ recipe found here. I made five quarts worth, and it fed 13 of us (before other people arrived.)



#3 - Pesto Sauce – serve over a curly pasta (like cavattapi) with sliced, grilled chicken. (A curly pasta holds the pesto well.) Note: the chicken can be grilled, sliced, frozen, thawed, and reheated moments before adding it to the hot pasta and pesto. Mmmm.



This was less than half of the pesto I made.

–Chicken Pot Pie – My all-time favorite do-ahead and freeze meal! I make these for just our family and freeze them too. It is a family favorite! My recipe comes from the King’s Arms Tavern in Colonial Williamsburg and can be found here. I made three of them, and then when we found out more guests were coming, I made two more in loaf pans. This recipe is a lot of work, but it’s soooo worth it!



–Soft Chicken Taco Meat

#1 – for soft chicken tacos - easily served with tortillas, cheese, salsa, and sour cream. Serve with tortilla chips and salsa on the side.

#2 – for chicken taco salads – quick and easy. Set it out like a taco salad bar and include: tortilla chips, lettuce, black beans, the chicken taco meat, shredded cheese, chopped tomatoes, salsa, and sour cream. It’s a one dish meal!

Soft Chicken Taco Meat

3 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

1 -2 T. oil

1/2 large yellow onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 – 16 oz. can stewed tomatoes

1 jalepeno pepper, seeds removed, minced

1 bay leaf

1 T. chili power

1 t. ground cumin

1/2 t. oregano

Poach chicken until cooked through; shred.

In large skillet, heat oil over medium heat and saute onion and garlic about 5 mins., or until tender.

Stir in undrained tomatoes, chopped jalapeno, bay leaf, chili powder, cumin, oregano, and 1/4 t. ground pepper. Add chicken and stir well. Simmer for about 35-45 mins., but don’t let all the liquid evaporate.

Serves 6. (I made five batches to fed 27.)

–Garlic-Studded Pork Tenderloin - Cut 10 slits in a center cut pork tenderloin and insert a peeled garlic clove in each slit. Rub the tenderloins all over with a mixture of dried herbs…anything you think would be tasty with garlic. Place tenderloins in Ziploc bags and cover with your favorite marinade; mine was a mixture of lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Cook at 375 degrees until meat thermometer says it has reached the proper temperature for pork to be done. I recall that it took a long time to reach that temperature with so many in the oven at once, and I think we bumped the oven temperature up to 400 at some point.





–Hamburgers – Hamburger meat can be mixed with your favorite add-ins (we like A-1 sauce and Montreal Steak Seasoning with ours), shaped into patties, and frozen flat on a cookie sheet. Once frozen, you can stack them with a piece of waxed paper between them and place in a Ziploc bag. They take very little time to thaw. When the men are grilling, the ladies can make a big fruit salad.



A word about grilled chicken: Grilled Chicken is so wonderfully versatile. (Not to mention, grilling chicken is a great way to keep a teenage boy busy!) Season, grill, slice or cube and freeze. It can then be: added to pasta dishes, made into fresh chicken salads with greens, be made into chicken wraps for lunch, be made into chicken salad sandwiches, and more!

What to serve for side dishes? The beauty of these meals is that they require very little to go with them! We had a BIG green salad most nights. Twenty-seven eaters will go through about 20 cups of lettuce (one large box of organic springs greens mix at our grocery store) each night for a salad. I tossed in various tasties with the lettuce: bleu cheese and dried cranberries, tomatoes and feta, strawberries and pecans, etc. I vaguely recall that we might’ve made rice to go with the pork tenderloins, since they took awhile in the oven (also served a green salad).



The one and only picture I took of the dinner serving line.

I picked up baguettes inexpensively on the bakery surplus rack, cut them into hunks, and froze.



You can also take a loaf of French bread, slice it, butter it (or butter it with garlic butter), wrap it tightly in foil, and freeze it. Then all you have to do is thaw it in the aluminum foil, and then pop it in the oven still in the foil to bake. Simple.

For beverages, we had available: water, milk, wine, and beer.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series of postings. If you never host 28 people at your house for an extended amount of time, I hope you can at least adapt some of these ideas for a smaller group, or even just for your own family. I hope it’s inspired you to offer hospitality to others, because “houses full of love have elastic walls.”

Hospitality for a Crowd - Part V--Lunches and Transportation

I had some great questions regarding transporation on my last posting, so I thought I would address transporation as well as lunches in this posting.


This day, after lunch and hiking, dessert was a stop at our favorite ice cream shop.  Mmm!  Can you imagine what the employees must've thought when 28 people walked in all at once?

Regarding transportation: Each family (5 of them) had their own rental car.  We had one bridesmaid who traveled mostly with our family.  But everyone switched cars a lot, because they all knew each other and wanted to socialize.  Even the adults switched around sometimes...so fun!  We have a driveway with a good size parking area, so putting that many cars there was not a problem.  No damage to parking surfaces, fortunately.

We traveled caravan-style wherever we went.  Difficult with six cars, but not impossible.  We put my in-laws large truck at the back of the caravan (easy to spot) and all those neutral-colored minivans in between my in-laws and our lead car.

Toll booths were challenging with six cars.  It's easiest to go to the lanes that are cash AND EZ-Pass.  Then we would go in first (with our Fast Pass) and then stop just past the booth and slowly inch forward as each car behind us paid, or we pulled off to the side and just waited.





We packed lunches for 27 people (one of our party being under a year old and too little to enjoy a sandwich) every morning but one. (The exception was when we walked the Freedom Trail in Boston. I just couldn't imagine 27 people toting little brown sandwich bags through the streets of Boston...silly. Plus, the opportunity to delve into the food court that is Quincy Market, with its 40+ vendors was just too tempting!) Three of us made the sandwiches each morning.

Sandwiches do not have to be boring! Sandwiches can be fabulous!

It's really great to vary the bread you use to keep the sandwiches tasty. I really love Costco's cibatta rolls for sandwiches. (The rolls freeze well too, so you can buy the rolls in advance and thaw when needed.) Some days we had sandwiches on multi-grain wheat bread. Another day we had wraps. Foccacia bread makes fabulous sandwiches, and it's so easy to make. You could make the foccacia bread weeks in advance, cut it into sandwich portions, and freeze. Bagel sandwiches could be another option.

I used deli-sliced meat and cheese bought pre-packaged at Costco. To make 27 sandwiches, we went through about 1 1/2 packages of meat per lunch. Costco definitely had the best price, and the meats and cheeses were excellent.

In addition to your breads, meats, and cheeses, the following items help to make really tasty sandwiches:

--lettuce
--tomato
--red onion (thinly sliced)
--mayonnaise
--mustards (spicy brown, Dijon, cranberry--great on turkey)
--pesto (can be made months in advance and frozen; goes great with turkey or chicken)
--hummus (mix with a bit of mayo so the sandwich isn't too dry)
--cream cheese

Here are four sandwich combinations we really like:

#1 - Turkey and provolone on cibatta with mayo., pesto, and lettuce
#2 - Ham and swiss on wheat bread with maple-mustard, lettuce, tomato, and red onion
#3 - Roast beef and meunster cheese on cibatta with garlic-herb cream cheese, lettuce and tomato
#4 - Turkey and provolone on wheat bread with mayo., cranberry mustard, and lettuce

If you're having a smaller crowd, chicken salad sandwiches on croissants with lettuce are wonderful! I would only serve this to a crowd, if I had time to make it the day before any guests arrived, otherwise it doesn't pass my test for being quick and easy enough to make with guests in the house. Here's my favorite chicken salad recipe:

New England Maple Chicken Salad

3 1/2 c. cubed chicken breasts (poached, cubed, frozen until needed)

1 c. chopped celery

2 T. chopped red onion

1/2 c. dried cranberries

1/4 c. chopped flat leaf parsley

1/4 c. chopped walnuts, toasted

DRESSING:

3/4 c. mayonnaise

6 T. real maple syrup

6 t. honey Dijon mustard

In a large bowl combine: chicken, celery, onion, dried cranberries, parsley, and walnuts.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together the dressing ingredients.

Pour dressing over the chicken and toss to coat thoroughly.

Cover and refrigerate up to 24 hrs. before serving.

Serves 6

As a side note: sandwich flavors will meld really wonderfully, if you wrap the sandwiches in plastic wrap and let them sit, keeping cool, for a few hours before eating. This works perfectly for making sandwiches in the morning, packing them in a cooler, and traveling to a destination. Tailgate party when you get there!

Beside the sandwich, we served some of the following with lunches (but never all at once): string cheese, Cape Cod chips, baby carrots, dips, individually packaged cheese squares, and more. Water bottles were available for beverages.

For desserts, Colette made cookies, brownies, and 7-layer bars, all of which were made ahead of time, frozen, and thawed. Mmmm.

Tomorrow - dinner! The best meal of the day!

Hospitality for a Crowd - Part IV--Breakfasts

As I launch into talking about making meals for a crowd of houseguests, let me just be clear that I am not going to tell you that you can feed 28 people for five+ days on $47.63. That’s just not happening. However, planning ahead and making and freezing does help to spread the cost out over months. For us, it was all part and parcel of the wedding expenses. This was what my kitchen looked like after my first trip to Costco.



In my experience, people will eat anything you set in front of them without complaint for lunch or dinner. But breakfast is a whole different matter. I rarely host a guest without some idosyncracies in regards to breakfast. Some must have their coffee first thing no matter what. Personally, I never drink coffee, but I need my morning glass of orange juice. My father-in-law wants his plain Cheerios every morning. Other guests we’ve had have hypoglycemia and must have protein with their breakfast. Some people don’t ever eat breakfast, while others always just want something light.

To further complicate matters, when you have 18 people all trying to use 2 1/2 bathrooms in the morning and leave the house by around 8:30 a.m., it’s nearly impossible to assemble everyone at once for a sit down meal. I never served breakfast as a sit down meal to the crowd, and not usually when we’re a smaller group either. I put it out at a general time, and people eat as they are able. This relieves everyone’s morning stress, including the cook’s. I think it helps people who aren’t “morning people” to have a more pleasant start to their day.

I set food out buffet-style on the kitchen island. Also on the island are: plates, bowls, napkins, small paper juice cups, plastic cutlery, orange juice, and milk.

To serve breakfast to a lot of houseguests, this is what I would serve over the span of a few days:

–cereals
We keep these in glass canisters and guests help themselves. Don’t ask me why, but people love the fact that they can help themselves to cereal in the canisters.

–homemade granola

This is easy to do far in advance of your guests arriving. My favorite, which has the added advantage of having a little taste of New England is:

Maple-Pecan Granola

2 c. regular oats

1/2 c. pecan pieces

1/2 c. real maple syrup

1/4 c. packed brown sugar

2 T. canola oil

cooking spray

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Combine: oats, pecans, syrup, brown sugar, and oil.

Bake at 300 degrees for 45 mins. on cooking sheet coated with cooking spray, stirring every 15 mins.

Yields 4 cups.

–quiches



Quiches are my favorite do-ahead breakfast food, because they can be done far in advance, frozen, thawed in the refrigerator overnight, and finished off in the oven in the morning. The recipe can be found at Thy Hand Hath Provided. I follow her recipe exactly. If you’re going to freeze them for guests, then under-bake by 5 mins.; cool completely. Wrap tightly in two layers of aluminum foil and freeze. The day before you’re going to serve them, thaw in the refrigerator. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes.

Some winning flavor combinations for quiches include:
-bacon, onion, bell pepper, mushroom, and cheddar
-asparagus, onion, bell pepper, ham and Swiss



–sweet breads

These freeze beautifully and can be made months in advance. Our favorites are: banana-oat, lemon-blueberry, zucchini, and almond-poppyseed. The Banana-Oatmeal Bread recipe can be found here. It’s THE BEST! I sprinkle the top with oatmeal before cooking. When I’m just making the recipe for our family, I make it into muffins and decrease the cooking time to just 25 minutes.



A note about serving sweet breads: if you slice the whole loaf of bread and then cut the whole loaf down the middle, it will serve more people than if you just slice it. People will be more inclined to take a half of a slice, rather than a whole one. I found that one loaf would easily serve 18 people.

–bacon (some mornings)

–scrambled eggs
Sometimes I made them in small batches as people came downstairs for breakfast. Sometimes a guest made them.

–yogurt
Fill a big bowl with ice and put an assortment of yogurts on the ice to keep cool.

–bagels and assorted cream cheeses (Let people toast them themselves.)

–English muffins, butter, and assorted jams

–fruit smoothies
These take a little time, but I make them a blender-full at a time, fill glasses, put the glasses in the refrigerator, and offer them as people are ready to eat. Don’t know how to make a smoothie? Easy: 1 cup vanilla yogurt, 3/4 c. – 1 c. juice, 5-6 frozen strawberries, a little of some other frozen fruit (like blueberries or peaches), one sliced banana. Puree. Serve with a straw and a smile!

–fresh fruit


Our group at the top of Cannon Mountain, New Hampshire, where (on a clear day) there is a view of four states and Canada.  Not a clear day, but a lovely view anyway.

Now I certainly didn’t provide all that food every morning. Here’s an example of what four days of breakfasts might’ve looked like:

Day #1 – yogurts, fresh strawberries, bagels and cream cheese, juice
Day #2 – scrambled eggs, sweet bread, fruit smoothies, juice
Day #3 – cereals and granola, English muffins, juice
Day #4 – quiches, yogurt, juice

And don’t forget the coffee!

Come visit tomorrow for lunch tips!