Our Easter

Easter day was so sunny and pretty! We had two days prior that were overcast and glum, but Easter was sparkly and gorgeous. We had a lazy one this year, including me being lazy and not really decorating the house until the last minute. I think I pulled it off though haha.
Since Caitlin couldn't eat rare lamb, I made a shoulder of lamb and cooked it kind of like you would cook carnitas. The recipe was from a cookbook called "A Kitchen in France." By Mimi Thorisson. There was some tinkering I had to do with the cut of the meat, because here in the US they butcher meat differently than they do in France. I ordered a shoulder, thinking that it would look like a pork shoulder roast, but it didn't. When I arrived to my favorite butcher shop and asked for my order, the guy came over and said I'm really curious what you are making, and why you requested 3 pounds of lamb shoulder. After discussing the recipe and having a fun conversation on how butchering varies, even from the East Coast, we decided to add a couple more blade shoulder chops to the three pound piece and tie butcher string around it to make it a bigger roast. So having done that, it brought up the weight more from the recipe. I upped the temp a bit and adjusted the cooking time. I think I could have taken it out sooner, but it was pretty tasty. The sauce was a garlic cream, made with pan drippings, cream, and ten cloves of garlic. As you can see from the first picture, there are already several heads of garlic with the lamb up there! That garlic caramelized quite nicely and perfumed the meat. We started dinner with a carrot ginger soup, with a spoon of creme fraiche and chives. I found some morel mushrooms at Berkeley bowl and added them to the asparagus, along with lemon zest. I lately have been loving Yukon gold potatoes more than red, so we had some with thyme.  No time this year to plan out a dessert, and having just finished consuming Caitlin's cheesecake the week before, I was a bit maxed out of baking. We bought this cute little coconut cake at Whole Foods, and I decorated the top with some cup cake picks that I already, and that was our Easter!

On good Friday I shot Caitlin's maternity pictures. I'm doing a separate post on that possibly on Wednesday. I'm still editing the pictures and hope to have them completed by then. They turned out so pretty!  You will have to come back and check it out.
Speaking of Caitlin, we have less than five more weeks to go before little miss Ruby is born! We are all so excited :)   Last Saturday we went over to their house to check out Ruby's little nursery area, and it was super cute. Caitlin painted the cutest little water color to hang above her little bassinet and everything is so nicely  color coordinated. All the little clothes are washed and now we wait.

Ok, I'm off to edit the pictures!

Easter

Hope everyone had a happy Easter if you celebrate it. Ours was very nice, and seemed to go at a really nice pace this year. Often times I feel like I'm rushing around trying to get things cooked in a timely manner, but this year didn't feel like that. Caitlin and Cyrous came over in the morning for a late breakfast and then dashed back home to get ready. It gave me a chance to switch out the table decor for dinner and start prepping. I chose a simple menu this year, as it was just us four as usual.  We have a local grocery store that has an incredible meat counter, and I was very happy to see that they offered a half of a leg of lamb. I love lamb for Easter, but end up with too much meat afterwards and there is only so much you can consume in a few days time. We aren't huge red meat eaters, so it often times goes to waste. I love how the half of the leg was only 4 pounds and this time no waste! I used a menu from one of my old "Gourmet" cook books. I sure do miss "Gourmet" magazine.  Anyway, the lamb recipe I used this year was an Italian recipe. The lamb marinaded in garlic, rosemary, anchovies, and olive oil. To accompany the lamb, I made a salsa verde out of parsley, mint, anchovies, oil and vinegar. If I ever make this again, I think I would add a bit more vinegar to the sauce. I roasted six bunches of the cutest baby carrots and mixed them with fennel. Steamed potatoes, and salad with a simple lemon vinaigrette rounded out the menu.  Dessert.....as you can see I posted a lot of pictures of the process of this tart. I found this recipe on Pinterest and thought I'd give it a try. I loved the crust, which was a very light textured shortbread. I want to use it again for other fruit desserts this summer! I'm a seasoned tart builder, so this was not a difficult recipe like others said on Pinterest, just more time consuming with slicing all the rhubarb on the mandolin and then poaching them in sugar water. The weaving was super fun, since I love to do lattice pies, this was very simple for me. The recipe wanted you to weave the rhubarb on parchment, then flip the whole thing on to the tart. I skipped this and did it directly on the tart instead. I could just see myself trying to flip this carefully woven rhubarb, then it get all mangled in the process!! I think it is far easier to do it the way I did. If I make this again, I would take more time to make all the strips more uniform. The filling was frangipane flavored with rum and vanilla extract.
We bought those cute chocolate rabbits pictured from our favorite chocolate maker in St. Helena called "Woodhouse Chocolates" click here to check this place out!  We ordered two little lady bunnies and two little gentleman bunnies, and Fed Ex guys literally dropped the order on my front door step, shattering them all!  Woodhouse over nighted more to us and luckily those made it intact. They are so good. Of course we still got to keep the broken ones, and we have been munching on those first hahaha.
The top photo with the embroidery bunny is going to be a bib. I decided though that I will not offer this in the shop. The appliqué is a bit too time consuming to produce. I will however embroider the actual bunny onto the bib instead. I love the shape of these little vintage bibs, so I decided I will test out the embroidery only version very soon. I'll be working on some little bonnets and bloomers for babies next. I really want to offer layette type of gifts and I'm still in the process of what I want to include in the set.
Our yard is bursting in blooms and bugs, and bees! The air feels heavy with pollen and floral perfumes. I love it, but the allergy medicine is definitely a must! The peonies are ready to bloom soon, so get ready for flower spam!

Happy spring everyone :)

Glorious Colors of November

Oh you big beautiful month of November, with your pumpkin pie spice colors sprinkled everywhere, ..I love you!  Out of every window of this house I see splashes of gorgeous colors of autumn. Sitting perched on a hill and the main living area being high up, I feel like I'm living in a cool tree house with such splendid views of the changing seasons.  As we were driving yesterday, we saw the most gorgeous trees that looked as if they were on fire, and I wish I had my camera because they just didn't look real. California rolls into autumn like a stubborn child not wanting to leave the party of summer, but when it arrives, it's so beautiful and I love drinking in all the sights and smells that come with it.
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite cooking holidays, and today I'm off to forage for the feast. I'll be making the classics and our new tradition of the Mexican sweet potato dish that everyone loves. I usually change up the green side dish every year, and have one new dessert in addition to pumpkin pie. This year I'm making a pecan chocolate tart that I saw in Martha's November issue. I'm off to look for maple sugar for it. Have you ever used maple sugar? I'm intrigued if it will actually  add a maple taste to the dessert or not. Stay tuned for the verdict on this.

As you can see buy the photo above, we finally got the kitchen island from Crate and Barrel that we wanted to put in that spot. I LOVE it and it really fits well in there! We also bought two stools for the other side where the leaf comes out, to have a little breakfast/sitting area. The stools we got were from Ikea, and look great (these are the ones) and look like they came with it. The island is a great height and it will be nice to have this surface for Thanksgiving food prep.  We also got some much needed shelving in my studio and now things are much more organized and efficient. It's always so fun to go in there and work with the nice lighting and everything now in its place.

Speaking of my studio, I have a couple of custom orders that I'm currently working on that are super cute and involve embroidery, which I really miss, and plan to start incorporating more of on up coming pieces that I have in mind and I just got the first cape order of the holiday season.  Next post I'll show you my new shelving and some snaps of the work I have been doing.

The newlyweds are doing great! Caitlin just got a job at Anthropologie for the holiday season, but wants to stay on after. Anthropologie is building a mega store in our town that will open in the fall of next year, and when she interviewed they told her that there will be more jobs in the visual department. So there could be some great opportunities, if she likes working for the company.

Well, I'm off now to go hunt for my maple sugar and other fixings. If I don't come back before Thanksgiving, I hope everyone has a great one!

Easter

Easter was quiet and peaceful. We went to Easter vigil on Saturday, so we could sleep in and have a nice breakfast, and just lounge around and cook and eat chocolate all day! Caitlin and Cyrous joined us for both church and Easter day. It's always so fun to make beautiful memories with these two!
This year I skipped the lamb and decided to make it easy with a ham from Whole Foods served with spring veggies tossed in a warm vinaigrette and red skinned mashed potatoes with grainy mustard. I found some beautiful English peas that were such a nice treat to have. I was a bit disappointed that the vinegar turned them an odd green after I had carefully blanched them to keep them bright green, but they did taste good none the less! David and the kids had a cheese course, but since I'm not a fan I sipped wine until they finished :)  For dessert I made my trusty strawberry rhubarb pie from a recipe I have had forever. I love this recipe because it has more rhubarb than strawberries, which gives it more of a nice tart taste. It also has a lot of vanilla in it which perfumes it so beautifully and makes the house smell so lovely while it is baking.
Then comes all the chocolate......did everyone over dose on it yesterday? I sure tried not to! Today I'm trying to catch up with all the party dishes and it's a bit slow moving I must say. Thought I'd write this blog post instead of doing said pile of dishes hahah.

I've got THE cutest dress cut out and started on, that I'm excited to show all of you. Lots of fun things to do and look forward to in the coming months, and as they unfold I will try and share as much as possible.

On our weather front, we got a bit of rain on Easter and more is on the way! I'm sure it will not really help our drought situation, but it sure is a welcoming site. Another front is coming for tomorrow and I hope to get cozy at home and work in the studio.

Hope everyone had a beautiful Easter!