Saturday Night Family Dinner

Saturday night is family night at my house. Come if you wish, take a night off, it's okay.The only rule is that I want to know how many I am cooking for.

Tonight is individual Beef Wellingtons along with baby carrots and Brussels sprouts in a brown sugar glaze, oven fried sweet potatoes and dessert is coming with one of the girls.

The veggies can be partially cooked earlier in the day, then blanched in ice water to stop the cooking, drained and stored in the garage. The garage is a great walk-in cooler in the winter, especially when there's a lot of action in the kitchen. The fridge won't be loaded with stuff teetering on the shelves.

This is how it looked at serving time after a short time re-heating in the prepared glaze.. The idea is that the colors will be pristine but I messed that up by adding the leftover mushrooms and onion from the wrapped tenderloins. It tasted lovely.

The beef tenderloins were browned in butter and seasonings earlier and also stashed for later and the above mentioned mushrooms and onion were prepared separately.

This left time to get some decorating started.

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Under the red stained glass is a lighted wreath. Trust me on this.

It's getting close to show time so the beef is now wrapped in puff pastry. The directions said let the frozen pastry thaw in the fridge. Done. Then the directions say to roll each pastry sheet into a square. What it doesn't say is how to separate the sheets. If anyone knows, please tell me.

I finally had to slice the sheets apart and as you can see the front ones are on the bulky side.  Included in the parcel is a handful of the sliced mushroom and chopped onion, sauteed until soft and a dash of sherry added. A beaten egg yolk is brushed on the pastry and it's ready for a few minutes in the oven to brown the pastry and re-heat the meat.

The directions called for 25-30 minutes but in the future I'd do some serious checking at the 20- minute mark.

And here we are, ready to roll. My people have arrived so there will not be a display of the finished product neatly arranged on platters. Everything tasted just fine.

We have some catching up to do.

Is There A Plastic Lid Thief in The House?

They have to go somewhere, right?  We store them away and then a genie takes over. You go for the appropriate lid when your container is filled and the lid is missing. Gonzo.

I live alone so I can't blame someone else for spiriting it away, although I do anyway.
I just know it's gone and It wasn't my doing.


So here's my new system--it takes up a lot of space but it is pretty well fool-proof. Snap on the lids immediately after cleaning and store container on the shelf.

Now let's see if the lids can make a break for it.

And down here in the oven drawer are the orphan lids and non-matching orphan containers. The matching parts will show up eventually, right?

So far so good.

Time For Settling In

Two things you can count on--pansies will be the last to pack it in for the winter and grass will endure forever.

I lost interest in weeding around late summer, so the grass weaseled its way in where it could..

Next season I think I'll give the pansies their own showcase; they ask for so little and give their all.

As for the grass, well, I'll just keep adding more brick "lawns."

Dove has been sitting outside for years, providing silent companionship for the neighboring cat that likes to nap on the ledge.

This is my variegated dogwood; in the summer it has nice leaves and scraggly flowers but in the winter the branches turn vivid red and look fantastic against the white snow.

The red leaves here actually belong to the bush behind it, in the neighbor's yard. Still, it's a nice effect when everything is settling in for the winter.