Birthday Fun

These meals were made and enjoyed in Olympia on Bethany and Wesley's birthdays (dinner and dessert on Bethany's, and breakfast on Wesley's).

First up: Dinner

The salad recipe is from the September 2012 Bon Appetit magazine for Grape and Watercress Salad with Caraway and Granola.  We replaced the pine nuts in the granola with pecans.

With the yogurt and buttermilk dressing, it's almost like having yogurt with granola and fruit, but in salad form!

Featuring Cornerstone Farm mozzarella was Eggplant, Mozzarella, and Saffron Rice Bake, also from the September 2012 BA magazine

We also made Sausage-and-Basil-Stuffed Tomatoes from the July/August 2012 Food Network Magazine.  The only thing we weren't crazy about in these was the walnuts--they could do without them, but otherwise they were delicious!

Up next: Dessert

Behind that melting ice cream is a Black Bottom Cupcake from www.bakerella.com, made with cream cheese from Cornerstone

The birthday boy wanted to help get some photos

Looks like he got some good shots!

And finally: Breakfast

On the menu was Peach-Almond Upside-Down Cake from the July/August 2012 FN Magazine.  Here it is right-side up

And upside-down

We made almond whipped (raw) cream to have with it, and had some granola from the salad from dinner with it too

Here's the newly 3 year-old ready for his birthday breakfast!

Better Late Than Never...

This post is very late; these meals were actually made in the middle of July!  We cooked in Olympia, and were joined by Ian and his dad Harry, who had just flown in that day for a visit.

The main course of our dinner was Turkey-Pancetta Roulade Sandwiches from the July/August 2012 Food Network Magazine.  We used chicken in place of turkey, and added chopped prosciutto to the cooked part of the filling instead of sliced pancetta.

The meat was really flavorful with the filling, and really made the sandwiches delicious!

For a vegetable dish, we put something together using things we had from the garden and the Cornerstone Dairy.  We blanched broccoli and hearty greens from the garden, made a white sauce with cream cheese in it, tossed the veggies in the sauce, put it in a baking dish, and topped it with queso blanco and then baked it.

The salad we made was also from the July/August 2012 Food Network Magazine: Honeydew and Arugula Salad.  The sweetness of the honeydew was a great compliment to the peppery arugula.

 

The dessert was Coffee "S'Mores" Pie from the July 2012 Bon Appetit magazine.  Our coffee ganache never set completely (it might have been because the raw cream we used wasn't 'heavy' enough?), so we had to sort of scoop it onto our plates, but it still tasted great!

We started our breakfast for the next morning that night - we made Sourdough Blueberry Pancakes from Tasty Kitchen, which need to be started the night before.  We didn't add blueberries, but put fruit on top instead, along with raw whipped cream (of course!).  These came out much better than some other sourdough pancakes that we had made before; they were fluffy and had great flavor.