CD - would you be interested in a stuffed mushroom recipe? - It’s a bit long (thus, I’ll spare you if it doesn’t fit the menu) - but can be prepared in advance. I’d be happy to post it if you’d like. I’ve gotten nothing but raves for them.

Let me know. And please enjoy the party.

But what do I know?

CD, I saw your query over at the House of Gray and did a little nosing around. Best I could come up with was this page from Bachman’s. The short of it is your best bet to get morning glories to blossom in the afternoon is to get in your time machine and go back to the spring and plant Japanese varieties:

As frustrating as it is, most morning glories close by mid afternoon. The Japanese types have a reputation of staying open a little later, but even those aren’t likely to be open late in the day. You might also find that on cloudy days they stay open a few hours longer. The Japanese varieties seem to get a few weeks head start on other varieties. The trade-off is that Japanese varieties don’t bloom quite as prolifically.

Another place I saw said that your paper-bag plan is a no-go because each blossom opens only once and then dies, so each morning’s flowers are new and unique. Of course you could just move the party to my front yard where the deck trellis is covered with a mix of blues, reds and magentas.

Let me know so I can clean out the pond filter early, okay? This little pump is working better than any of the bigger ones ever have, but the downside is it can only handle its internal mesh filter and that clogs up about every 3 days. Damn goldfish poop anyway. :)

don’t get ’em from Schnucks:

Schnucks grocery stores are recalling Schnucks Smokehouse Turkey Wings sold in the stores’ meat departments.

Only products with a “sell by” date of Aug. 24, 2007, are affected by the recall.

Sigh. Between West Nile (already here) and bird flu (coming soon even if it’s fallen off the newsie’s radar) I can’t really recommend chickens in every back yard, but you need a damn scorecard any more to buy food at the damn store. Although wadda they expect, naming a store something like “Schnucks” anyway?

you know, i suppose there are slightly more useful things i could do if i were to go back in time than replant the gardens…

but anyway, yeah, i didn’t think it would work, just dreamin’ aloud. i’ve got plenty to show, so it’s ok. also, these are my literal neighbors, so most of them have had the opportunity to glance jealously at my crowded trellises in the morning and behold the magenta, deep purple, variegated and blushing blue glories.

i’ll get ’em with the convolvulii and baby hostas. no one can resist teh cuteness, and they are afternoon plants.

all brilliant correntian reader moments in food are welcome.

The prepare the day before part:

12 fresh mushrooms - 3 inches in diameter (you may want to use smaller ones - easier as finger food)

Remove stems - chop stems finely and squeeze out the water in a towel and set aside for stuffing.

With the caps, brush with melted butter or the equivalent - place them in an oven-proof pan, cap down - salt and pepper.

Stuffing:
3 tbs finely minced onion and 2 tbs butter 1 tb oil - saute for a few minutes. Add 3 tbs minced shallots or green onions. Add stems.

Add 1/4 madiera or sherry - cook off until evaporated.

Take off heat and add 3 tbs fine bread crumbs, 1/4 c. grated swiss cheese, 1/4 c. grated parmesan cheese, 4 tbs minced parsley, 1/2 tsp. tarragon and some S&P.

After well mixed, you can add some liquid - cream, H&H or milk - very little - just so that when you scopp it, the stuffing holds together, just a bit.

Spoon the stuffing into the prepared caps evenly. Top them with a little more of the grated swiss, and if you don’t care about your arteries at all, you can drizzle a bit more of the melted butter over top.

Refrigerate until before party.

Preheat oven - 375. Cook on top third of the oven for about 20 minutes - will take less for smaller mushrooms.

Cool a bit and serve.

I might send off a couple others to you - 1) Herbed Gougeres, and 2) vegatable sushi (would be great with home-grown veggies!)

Enjoy, CD!

But what do I know?

CD - You’ve got me on a roll - don’t encourage me! I love to cook and entertain - this way I can do it vicariously.

This is a nice one for hot days: Chicken salad, served finger-style.

Day before:

Poach boneless, skinless chicken breasts in boiling water with a bit of onion flakes until cooked through - then cool completely.

Chop celery, onion, then cooled chicken. (1/4, 1/4 and 1/2 as to relative amounts).

In a bowl, add mayo (not too much - lite mayo is fine) and a tiny bit of lemon juice. Put in refigerator to get really cold.

Before serving, add chopped apple, and some sliced, or chopped nuts (I like almond, but pecan or walnut is fine). Mix. (A little Waldorf twist).

Scoop into mini pitas (white or wheat, cut in half). Or better for a hot day, scoop into endive leaves.

But what do I know?

This one is very simple and there’s a lot of room to do all kinds of things with it. Take a small muffin tin, the kind you get for tiny muffins. Push a won ton skin into each hole and bake at 350 for, I don’t know, ten minutes? Until the skins are crisp. Now you have a shell you can use for all kinds of things. What Mrs DBK and I have done is put a biot of lettuce in each won ton, then a mandarin orange section, then (this is an awful way to write down a recipe, I know) we put some chopped up chicken breast that we’ve sauteed with Chinese Five Spice. Put a couple of drops of Hoisin sauce on that to keep it moist, but not so much that the won ton skin gets wet and softens up. It’s two bites and easy to eat as finger food.

You can put whatever you like into the won ton skin, though. Try a bit of lettuce leaf and then chopped shrimp mixed with cocktail sauce and it’s a very easy shrimp cocktail where you don’t have to touch the shrimp with your fingers.

Anyway, that’s an easy one to do and it doesn’t take much time to make dozens of these things. You just pop the skins into the tins (the more tins you have, the more you can make at one time, naturally), bake the skins to crispness so they’ll hold their shape, then fill them with whatever you like. If you stick a bit of lettuce on the bottom, you can keep the skins dry so they won’t fall apart. You can get endlessly creative with these things since, once you have the won ton skins to hold them, you can stuff with anything in the world. A little chopped, mixed fruit with powdered cayenne pepper is very nice. You get the sweetness plus that bite of pepper. Use pineapple and pear. On a hot summer’s day the fruit is cooling but the pepper gives it some pizzazz. Chopped cucumber mixed with ranch dressing and croutons is also good. Inexpensive, refreshing, easy to put together, and the garlic and oil from the croutons goes well witht he ranch and cucumber.

Oh, and the won ton skins work well with that chicken salad mentioned above, too.

you’ll want some gherkin-size cucumbers for this.
Halve them lengthwise and scrape an indent out where the seeds would be (include any seeds if the cucumbers are that close to maturity).
Chop two boiled eggs with a quarter teaspoon of caraway seed, a tablespoon or so of fresh dill, a half-teaspoon of lemon juice, a minced scallion and a quarter teaspoon of minced garlic. Mince a couple of water chestnuts OR one celery rib and stir into this, then chill thoroughly; right before serving, stir in a couple tablespoons good mayo and spoon into the cucumber shells.

The stuffing is also good in celery sticks or, if you have them, sturdy leaves (I like this in a red lettuce leaf, but your mileage may vary); for fun, try it with a little minced watercress on cocktail rye or with a little minced cilantro on tortilla strips.

You can extend the filling with a tablespoonful of minced fresh tarragon, and use it to stuff split seeded jalapenos, too.

Take approximately equal amounts of Roquefort and cream cheese, let soften, and combine. Wrap the mixture around seedless grapes, roll then in chopped walnuts, and refrigerate till needed. It’s a bit of a mess to cover grapes with soft cheese, but worth it: the grape and blue cheese make a great combination.

Tomatoes are ridiculously good this time of year. Might I humbly suggest:

Tomatoes (heirlooms if possible), halved and sliced
Fresh local mozzarella or mild goat cheese
Fresh Basil leaves
a pinch of salt
a drizzle of basalmic and (optional) EV olive oil
toothpick through it all, and voila! perfect food for hot weather

“A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead

there being a major heat wave in progress hereabouts, one must not forget drink:

MORNING GLORY COCKTAIL

Three dashes gum syrup
Two dashes of curacao
Two dashes of bitters
One dash of absinthe
One pony of brandy
One pony of whiskey
One piece of lemon peel, twisted to express the oil
Two small pieces of ice.

Stir thoroughly and remove the ice. Fill the glass [“medium sized bar glass”] with [the above concoction then add] Seltzer water or plain soda, and stir with a teaspoon having a little sugar on it.

From The Bon-Vivant’s Companion, or, How To Mix Drinks, Jerry Thomas, 1864.

(BTW the earliest recipe for the martini, then called the “martinez”, comes from not just this same book but the same page as the “Morning Glory.” Definitions of obsolete terms like “pony” supplied upon request or you can just count “glug one, glug two” or something similar, remembering to leave space for selzer to taste.)

seven ounces?

CD, I have a different suggestion for drinks.
Mint juleps with fresh mint
Real lemonade
Tomato juice, served chilled (you’ll be surprised how good this tastes on a hot day)

Okay, mint juleps are nice, but in hot weather, it’s Tom Collins time for your gin drinkers. And for the trendy (okay, so it’s last year’s drink): mojitos. Make sure you use simple syrup for all the sweet drinks because granulated sugar just doesn’t blend well.

How bout a nice chilled rose (that’s rosay) or better, a sparkling rosay?

You can put all kinds of stuff on crostini, olive oil, garlic, and plum tomato slices with basil (leaves or dried) with or without the mozarella.

Or chop the tomatoes and put oil and basil in then dollop on crostini. (I confess to using Worcester sauce too)

Provolone is also nice and of course prosciutto. You can put the prosciutto on the crostini and put cheese on top. Don’t favor prosciutto and cantaloupe together myself but cantaloupe and other melon pieces are refreshing in the heat.

I made up this drink in honor of my aunt Mary Helen’s birthday this past Sunday.

3 parts Peppar Vodka
1 itsy bitsy part dry vermouth
big squeeze fresh lemon juice

( for 4 martini’s I did 12 jiggers of vodka, maybe 1 Tbl dry vermouth and 2 Tbls fresh lemon juice.) I served them on the rocks because it was close on 100 last Sunday.

For garnish, line the rim with lemon juice of course, kosher salt, and I used lemon pepper and mized the two. I also used Himalyan pink sea salt, but just kosker salt and dried lemon peel would work.) I skewerd a lemon twist, cocktail onion and a grape tomato I had marinated in vodka and peppercorns.that’s the Bloody Mary part of it.

This was really tasty and everyone loved it, and it was light and refreshing.

Tipsy tomatos, or drunken tomatos are one of my most requested and easy hordouvres. Grape toms, I poke mine all the way thru 3-4 times with a corn cob holder, this gives them 6-8 holes. Put in sealable plastic bag, cover by about 2/3rds with vodka, use the cheap stuff, not the $20 bottle of Peppar for this, and a tablespoon or so of whole peppercorns, red,green,wlack and white, or any combination and do the mortar and pestle thang and pour over the toms, then add a bit of water to cover all. Seal bag and turn over occassionally.2-4 hours in advance. Serve with kosher or sea salt and lemon pepper for dipping.

And a really well chilled pinot grigio is great on a hot summer day.

“Add two and a half pounds of refined sugar to one pint of water, dissolve the sugar over heat, and remove the scum. Strain the solution, while hot, through a flannel bag.”

—The Manufacture of Liquor, Pierre Lacour, 1853.

(A truly evil book containing numerous recipes for the production of fake liquor. Naughty Pierre used everything from hot peppers to sulfuric acid to replicate the “burn” sensation of alcohol without the expensive equipment and disagreeable manual labor required for actual distillation.)

This syrup recipe makes rather more than is likely to be consumed at one party no matter how exuberant or well attended, but excess can always be stored in a clean bottle and either saved for future parties or used, after dilution, in hummingbird feeders or the like.

here are a few more pretty easy recipes.

Pineapple wrapped in bacon and broiled or grilled. I par boil the bacon so it takes less cooking time. And I use the pepper bacon, so you get that sweet salty spicy happy dance on your tongue. Just chunk and core some fresh pineapple, wrap in half a slice of parboiled bacon, secure with a toothpick, and broil or grill for 10 minutes, turning once, til bacon is cooked.

Prosciutto and Papaya

Peel and seed papaya, slice into nice finger size peices, wrap with thinly sliced prosciutto, secure with toothpick. Mince fresh mint finely and lime peel, sprinkle over. Squeeze lime juice and a splash of tequila over top and then fresh ground black pepper. ( This is a great twist on the melon, prosciutoo classic.)

Spiced Olives:

Green and black olives (Kalamata,piccoline, etc)
Pickling spice, 1/4 tsp fennel seeds, 1 tbl orange rind, 2 tbl lemon juice, 2-3 cloves garlic chopped 1/4- 1/2 c olive oil. Bit more cinnamon or allspice or nutmeg, depending on taste. Warm spices and olive oil, then pour over olives the day before and refrigerate. Turn occassionally. bring to room temp an hour or so before event, since the olive oil solidifies in refridge.

Maybe try a Sgroppino:

1/2 c. Sparkling wine, champagne, etc.
1 shot vodka (chilled)
2 tbs. frozen lemon sorbet

Serve in a tall glass, flute - with mint garnish.

But what do I know?

So pardon me if I get carried away. I haven’t cooked professionally since my divorce, but I still create recipes all the time for family and friends. And in the pinapple bacon recipe up above, I certainly did not mean par boil the bacon. I am sooooo rolling my eyes. Just pre-cook it for 3-4 minutes and drain that fat off, you want it really pliable.

I have several great tea sammich recipes that always went over well when I catered.( bacon and parsley and ginger lime cuke sammies) And a new cheeseball that folks love. And some armadillo tails, I stole from the author Jill Connors Brown.

I have several great dessert recipes that are refreshing and can be made single serve, creme de menthe brownies and this great Cherry Bisque Tortoni that I made Sunday for my aunt’s Bday.

So email me, or leave me a note here, if you want any of those recipes.

Dee

to a summer, finger-food pot-luck.
With bland crackers, half a block of creme cheese and half a bottle of mint jelly;
with the other half, and a home-made salsa, on blue-corn tortilla chips.
I’ve even been invited back.

Not trying to get into an argument here, but I don’t care for crostini at anything but a sit-down table. If this is a stand up situation, stuff falls off of crostini…unless you do a slice of seared rib-eye left mainly carpaccio (sear it to kill any bacteria on the surface of the beef, then slice) with a little aioli on it. I’ve had that and it was fantastic. But chopped stuff on a crostini is hard to eat without a plate to catch the drop-offs.

i like the way the thread just sort of evolved liked that…heh.

but for bevs, i’m limiting it to wine and beer. insurance purposes, plus there will be kids and teens, so even as everyone is walking home, at least my risk is lessened. i hate that i have to think like that. in the old days, i would have been offering them so much more, but one just can’t do that today, never knowing who is an informer for heimat security.

barf, we had a neighborhood block social the other days, and it was sponsored by the police. they even had that stupid man in a fur covered dog thing suit there (smart, in the ~100F/100% hum weather we had that day). everyone was a little creeped out, as i don’t think anyone thought they’d be seeing three uniforms during an afternoon “ice cream social” (what the sign said it would be) like that.

you gotta have ginger beer and root beer.

Bonus: these make excellent ice cream floats.

From my days as a poor youth in NY, broiled spam with Campbell’s asparagus soup on top. Not sure what you put it on to make it finger food.

No, it’s really good.

It is.