Surprise Invitations

I am so excited to finally be able to share an invitation I did for a dear friends Surprise 30th Birthday Party!! +Shannon Fleming loves green and so I knew I needed to use that! As with most of my invitations I used black printing to save money. It is so much more fun to use the money on paper then ink. A lot of my invitations incorporate some kind of sowing or fiber so I love how the "Shhh" is warped around to close this invitation up.

The paper came from envelopper inc.

Last night dinner was Mushroom Barley Pie from Smitten Kitchen! Oh My so good. I had mushrooms I needed to use up and this was right up my ally. :)  I did add some fennel and a dash of chili flakes, and put chicken broth instead of the wine I did not have. This is a vegetarian recipe but I think it would add a sweet sausage to it next time.  To bad I did not take a photo because it looked almost as good as hers!

Epi Bread

I Love me some bread!! And with our Friends Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow I was making this yummy Epi bread today. It is a take on a traditional french bread. I am borrowing a friends book "Baking Artisan Bread" by Ciril Hitz. This book is intense, I enjoy making bead but this took my novice bread making to crazy technical. I had never folded my bread in the middle of its rising or I added Diastatic Malt to be dough (I had never even herd of it). The nice thing about this book is that although it is very technical they do walk you step by step and even have a DVD to watch them do some of the different steps. I wing a lot of things in my backing so did not watch the DVD but plan on it before I make my next bread (maybe a Ciabatta).

Yes and yes it turned out great. I did eat some right out of the oven and only wish I had two ovens so I could serve these hot tomorrow!! Can't wait to share this bread with friends tomorrow :)

Pumpkin-Chocklate Tart

A month or so ago I had gotten a container of creme fraiche for $0.19 at Echo Hill. I could not pass that price up but I had no plans for it. Today it finally got used in a Pumpkin-Chocolate Tart from Martha Stewart. Also used were the neck pumpkins I processed and froze in October. It seemed like it needed to be a bit sweeter but I love my things sweet :)

Pumpkin-Chocolate Tart
http://www.marthastewart.com/343956/pumpkin-chocolate-tart
Chocolate Crust
http://www.marthastewart.com/344834/chocolate-crust

Oven Friend Ranch Chicken

This is what is for dinner tonight :) Used my new tablet a Nexus 7 while cooking! Way better then running back and forth to the computer or worrying I am going to get food in the chrome book keyboard.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/oven-fried-ranch-chicken-recipe/index.html