First Wine Workshop at Lily's

It is truly amazing the things I am learning over this year of pause

when I let myself just relax and enjoy who I am in this present moment

Here's something;

I love to throw a party

I'm loving it even more now that I get three days to prep for it,

have time to gather flowers from the yard

and haven't served over 200 people lunch two hours prior to the gig

My spring celebration dinner in May was the unveiling of the wall removal between

the two rooms upstairs.  We had just finished the renovation and people 

commented that the acoustics were a bit overwhelming

So I busied myself before this next event

 hanging quilts everywhere and putting a few rugs down

It really seemed to help and I get to look at my quilts!

 

Last night was the kick off of what I hope will become a new pattern at Lily's

Wine experts; Max from Blue Hill Wine Shop, Michael from Vias Imports and Karolyn from Pine State

came together to showcase 18 varietal wines from 10 regions in Italy

I set long tables,  prepared traditional foods, and served the meal family style

24 people tasted, ate and learned as much as they could take

in about wines from Piedmont all the way to Sicily

A bit of the menu: 

Roasted chicken with parsley pesto and rosemary

Pecorino's from Italy via Max's shop connections

Braised greens from Carding Brook Farm

Marinated chic peas with champagne vinegar and red onion

A real hit was my tomato sauce 

You will find the recipe below

And here's my favorite thing to do with the leftovers!

Polenta "fries" made with yesterday's polenta cut into thick fingers, 

pan fried in olive oil until crispy and served

with tomato sauce for dipping

Yummy!

TUSCAN STYLE TOMATO SAUCE

(I made this for a crowd, so you can easily divide the recipe in half for a smaller batch

just use 3 boxes of tomatoes and remember it freezes well)

5 boxes of Pomi chopped tomatoes

2 6oz cans of Muir Glen tomato paste

1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped

6 large cloves of garlic, chopped

1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 - 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

Sea salt to taste

In a large heavy bottomed pot -I like Crueset for this one-

 heat the olive oil over medium heat

Add the onion and garlic and sauté until the garlic becomes fragrant, about 30 seconds

Add the tomato paste and stir with a whisk to combine

Stir in Pomi tomatoes, season with red pepper flakes and salt

Bring to a simmer, turn down heat and cook, stirring very often

until reduced to a nice, thick sauce

This takes a good hour and a half to two hours

Taste occasionally for salt and adjust when necessary

Serve on whatever you choose, or eat it with a spoon!

Enjoy your weekend everyone, and thank you.

Kyra

A Juicer?

Renee bought a juicer.

That in itself took me about a week to process

Then it came.

Then she made juice with things like kale and beets and swiss chard

and apples and ginger, pretty cool, but wait a minute ~

 what about all

that waste?

See all the pulp to the left?

 OMG

I just spent 20 years of my life successfully running restaurants on the

premise that "there should be no waste"

So I read up on juicing;  detox, cleanse, vitamins, don't want the roughage...

I get it and I've even had fun making juices - no kale in mine please -

beets, carrots, lemon and apples with a bit of ginger, nice.

I still don't feel good about it, honestly.  I can't imagine harvesting

carrots and beets and cukes, if I am lucky, from my garden this summer

to see most of them smushed up in a cup and put on the compost pile

Yikes, some input on this anyone?

Hope you are enjoying your day

Kyra

A Full Pantry

 The heart warming joy of a full pantry

I'm not sure I can explain, the feelings of

Settled, Safe and Belonging  it brings to me to glance up and see

shelves filled with jars of lentils, nuts, grains and dilly beans
bowls of sweet potatoes, onions and garlic

to open a cupboard door and see cat treats and honey,

homemade granola and rice paper wrappers

A foodie friend was snooping thru my fridge on Friday night

and found my preserved lemons, and avocado oil

Kalamata olives, toasted almonds and new wines

made it easy to coax them into staying for a few hours and a wonderful serendipitous visit

It has been raining cats and dogs for three days since. 

All cozied in and not wanting to go out I have been cooking

with everything I can find within the house

Rustling through my spice cupboard I found a small jar of Fennel Pollen

that I had bought with a friend when she needed some for a Mario Batali recipe in February

It inspired these truly incredible pork chops, which I am sorry, I was unable to

get a good picture of, all pretty from the oven.

ROASTED PORK CHOPS WITH FENNEL POLLEN
serves 2

Two 1 1/2 inch thick bone in pork chops

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1 heavy T  fennel pollen

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 medium yellow onion, peeled and sliced into 1/4" thick slices

1 bulb of fennel, cored and sliced into 1/4" thick slices

 (optional - I didn't have any but I thought it would be good)

3 parsley sprigs

Olive oil

Couple splashes of white wine or milk

Pat the pork chops dry and season them generously on both sides with

kosher salt, black pepper and the fennel pollen

I did this a few hours in advance, covered them and let 

them sit in the fridge to season

If you do this, take them out about 1/2 hour before cooking them to

warm them up a bit

Sprinkle the garlic cloves on the bottom of a 9" baking dish

Layer the onions and fennel (if using) on top of the garlic, sprinkle lightly with kosher salt

 Lay the parsley sprigs over the veggies

Place the seasoned pork chops in a single layer over it all

Drizzle with olive oil and a few splashes of white wine, or milk, 

or water, if you have neither of the others

Roast, un-covered, in a 400 degree oven for approximately 18-20 minutes

I like my pork chops to temp on a meat thermometer at 150 degrees

Remove them from the oven, cover with a piece of wax paper or foil and let

rest for 10 minutes

Set the pork chops aside.

 Pour the veggies -minus the parsley sprigs- and pan juice into

the bowl of a food processor and pulse until somewhat creamy, but not smooth

Smear the sauce on the plates and lay the pork chops on top

Garnish with fresh parsley if so desired

OMG, these were SO good
I served them with roasted sweet potatoes and broccoli

No doubt worth investigating the fennel pollen

Enjoy your day, soggy or not!

Kyra

Bedding and Being a Nester

I am a nester.  It is that simple.  I love to be home, fluffing up

the whatever and moving the whatnots and there is no

better place for me to find comfort than in my bedroom

I know many of us are like this and I was feeling so grateful

for the quick, easily obtainable junky fix that textiles brings to a compulsive nester.

Just the other week,

Off went the chocolate brown linen drapes in my bedroom 

Now we're sporting sheer white linen for summer

I scored this awesome gray one cloth quilt at TJ Maxx,

draped some modern bird fabric over a pillow and presto,

a whole new look!

I started thinking how important our beds are and the

wonderful warm safe place we create for ourselves, or someone else, 

hence this sweet little quilt Lydia just finished for her young daughter

On "The Monthlies" trip to Rockport we stopped

at Cherished Home on the way and Suzanne bought

this beautiful Pine Cone Hill Duvet for her bed at 75% off

It has prompted her to re-paint her bedroom in a soft taupe,

voile, instant rejuvenation and ELATION (especially on my part), for not much money

Whenever I get a hit of winter blues, I change the whatnots

on the top of my bed 

And I LOVE to create bedding for new potential nesters!

Enjoy your weekend, 

and maybe put a little textile skip in your step if you get the chance

Kyra

A One Pan Meal

I have been harboring a secret.

I have had this weird pan in my foot for about 2 months 

and I didn't want anyone to tell me that I couldn't

wear my Vibram 5 Fingers anymore, so I

just kept ignoring it.

Coupled with the usual weird twisty feeling I always have in my knee and

a tightness in my hip, my acupuncturist convinced me to go see

Steve Curtin, a well known Osteopath in Blue Hill

Guess what?!  It isn't the shoes!!

My whole right side is twisted from standing funny for EVER

in restaurants.  And.  He can fix me!!

I came home elated, tired and hungry.

I wanted a really quick, easy, delicious comforting meal

I had defrosted some chicken breasts that morning,

 had some sweet potatoes, 

a few shallots (could easily have been red or white onion)

 and broccoli all in the house,

so I layered them in a roasting pan, seasoned them

with salt, pepper and some rosemary - I used two sprigs of

fresh, but you could use 1 teaspoon of dried -

 I drizzled it all with a bit of olive oil

Then, I sprinkled the chicken breasts with salt, granulated garlic and a bit of dried thyme

I browned them nicely in a skillet (whoops that is technically two pans)
and laid them on top of the veggies

To add a bit of moisture to the pan as it would roast I 

threw about a 1/2 cup of white wine into the skillet and did a bit of deglazing.

It could have been water or even orange juice, whatever you have on hand.

I drizzled this over everything, hit it with a few splashes of red wine vinegar

 and popped it into a 375 degree oven

I basted it every 10 or 15 minutes to make sure everything was

staying moist and cooked it a total of 35 minutes, until the potatoes

were tender and the chicken temped at 165 degrees.

I let it sit for 15 minutes and voile, dinner was on the table

One pan, lots of flavor and not a ton of effort.

Perfect

And, my foot doesn't hurt today

Enjoy!

Kyra

"The" Weekend

A nap on the screened in porch, quilting, sewing, a wonderful long

phone conversation with my best friend in Florida, dinner out in

my newly made dress,  freshly caught halibut on the grill, Oh My Gosh!

I know and truly appreciate that people will miss Lily's Cafe

this summer, and have all winter, but the peace in my soul

is overwhelming

The first thing Theresa said on the phone was, "this is the THE weekend,

how do you feel not working?"

Very intuitive of her, because it wasn't until Sunday, as I came in from 

the backyard onto the freshly opened screened porch that

the freedom of not waiting on hundreds of people every day

all summer really hit me

Instead of directing 9 employees, preparing the best food possible

 and trying to perceive the needs of many,

I was sitting in this lovely space, sewing the binding on a quilt

and listening to the birds

I also had a chance to revisit some older work as I made a pillow runner to match

this quilt I had sold several years ago.  Isn't it fun to see what you have done with some

distance between you and when you completed it?

This pattern is from the book Simple Start, Stunning Finish by Valerie Wells

The colors remind me of sea glass and pure summer and the bed it lays on looks

right out over the water - pretty cool!

I pulled this old hand made beauty out, repaired a ripped block,

 gave it a good soaking in Oxyclean and hung it in the sunshine to dry

My cats who have taken to eating their food 

outside of their bowls, now have new little placemats made from oil cloth

I picked up at Fiddleheads while we were in Belfast

Here is the dress I made to wear to dinner.  I just hope I didn't

look like the tablecloth! 

I'm addicted to this simple shift pattern. 

 I seem to modify it each time I make one, and just started 

 curving in the waist a bit so it isn't so sack like.

I need all the help I can get! 

Well, I find myself filled with love, teary and oh so grateful

for the time I have given myself to fall in love with life again

and the magic of summer in Maine

Here's to all of you!

 I hope you had a great start to the season as well,

Kyra

Yes, we have no tahini

When I told Renee that I was headed over to mow

Lily's this morning she said, "your crazy, the only good day 

to mow was yesterday"

I'm really not sure what that meant, but I had three

hours of intimate yard time - did I really write that about

mowing 2 acres of lawn? -

to think about it

I've decided that I live in a Ruth Moore novel

Anyway, something else I was thinking about was my book club

meeting yesterday and how much everyone seemed to enjoy 

the hummus I made.

Since it is a party weekend I thought the recipe might come in handy

Tahini is one of those things that always seems to sit in my pantry

for ever, then when I find a need for it, I've just thrown it away

because it had sat there forever.

So, even with Sarah Britton's recent, very romantic, blog post about it

I have admitted to myself that I don't like it very much

My wonderful Aunt Ethel always made this version of tahini free hummus 

as a tidbit before dinner - I can smell the cukes from her garden that she would

serve with it instead of crackers -

and I have adopted it as my own

Summer Hummus

2 cups cooked or 1 large can of garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed

2 cloves of garlic, rough chopped

A nice sized handful of fresh parsley, roughly chopped

1/4 - 1/2 cup olive oil - I have never measured it -

Juice of 1 juicy lemon

Sea or Kosher salt to taste

Place the beans, garlic, parsley, lemon juice and salt in the bowl

of a food processor.  Add some olive oil, probably most of the 1/4 cup

and process until nice and creamy, or with a bit of texture, whatever you like

add more oil to get the texture you are looking for

taste for salt

Once you get it down the way you like it, think of folding in artichoke hearts,

or roasting the garlic, or using cilantro instead of parsley.......

So many possibilities!

Mostly, enjoy your weekend everyone,

and thank you.

Kyra