Falafel!

For last Friday's reception I had clients who had traveled quite a bit, and had even lived in Israel for a while, and their choices reflected their exotic background. Loved it. We did falafel and pitas with some neat sauces. We did some ranch for the non-adventurous types, but really, it didn't get used. What went quickly were the Tahini-lemon sauce, and the cucumber-mint sauce. I was kind of proud of our guests.
We also did some standard things like fruit, and chocolate dipped strawberries, and there were some sheet cakes too, but when we started serving the wedding cake, it was decimated! I've never seen a wedding cake get eaten like that. People raved about it. I guess I should get the baker's card or something. Raspberry filling. Yum (except I couldn't eat any --bummer).
The bride's mother rented a huge, fantastic tent who's stakes only tripped me once (a record for clutzy me). It was lovely. The bride, of course, was beautiful. Long dark hair, and tiny perfect dress and figure. The mother too, who is a friend of mine from Tae Bo you could tell had been hitting all of her workouts. :)
We also did some neat breads --Joshua rolls, asiago rolls, foccacia, parkerhouse, and whole wheat. Honey and Grains bakery really kicked in for me this time. It was a little more expensive than Provo bakery, but I got some nice feedback from guests on quality.


Here's a better shot of the falafel and its sauces. We ctarted out folding them for the guests, but then decided to leave them separate. These pitas weren't the best I'm afraid. I will use a different option next time.
OK, I had to get a shot of this. We had the tables set up on the west side of the tent to start with, and it got too hot, so we had all the strong guys move the tables for me to the east side of the tent. No problem for them it seemed.
These guys were also amazing when it came to loading and unloading my car. I swear my car was unloaded in five minutes once I arrived ---and you should have SEEN my car. Literally floor to ceiling packed. Also the first time I've had first rate help for cleanup and loading in a long time. Very classy.

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Catering from my tree house.

Finished August's first catering job last night. This was a super hard one for me in one sense --being on this next-to-no carb diet (just small servings of really healthy ones like oatmeal with no milk ) and it was all desserts. That being said, you know what happened. I held out really well until the day of where things got crazy and I didn't eat, and yes I ate HALF OF THE LOAF of the Paula Deen zucchini bread my neighbor sent me when I got home. Yeah. Free meal for the week and I didn't get to have it on a date with Jeff. We were trying for Monday. Back to my story.
These turned out killer. Pecan turtle chocolate brownies. I contracted out the base (because I would have eaten 5 pounds of batter if they were done in my house), then made homemade caramel to drizzle, toasted pecans and chopped them on there, and chopped big pieces of chocolate on there. People were going through the line and would go "oh my gosh those look dangerous" so I said "that means you'd better take two". So they did usually. I'd bought some extra just in case --we had plenty.

Lemon vanilla phyllo shells. I've got to defend myself --fillo and phyllo are correct, I like the old spelling better. I think it's more romantic.
See how the flower arrangement worked? It got a little wilty by the end, but not too bad. I was thinking it was going to be mostly neutrals, and they weren't using much blue, so I did all whites, silvers and greens. But it turned out they had a lot of blue. I wish I'd asked again about plans at the last minute ---I had access to a lot of blue. Oh well. I think it was OK. We had a few greenery sprigs to poke into my table to tie it in.

Mini berry pavlovas with cream and chocolate sauce. That was my other screw-up in the car on the way home. The client took a jar of chocolate sauce, but we had another quart jar that wasn't used up, and well, it was chocolate and cream and sugar and sweetened condensed milk.....



THIS was our kitchen for the night. We were in a park-like historical apple orchard with a small historical landmark cabin which I don't think was open at all. This pine was taller by far than anything around and had a big tent-like area underneath that was pretty hidden from guests.


Here's the opening and one of my helper girls for the night. There was also a squirrel living in the tree that kept chittering at us periodically, and at one point I think dropped a pine cone on my head. That, or the tree was mad. I had to use vaseline to get the pine sap out of my hair when I went home, but really it was pretty funny.

Here's our phyllo and brownie station.


Here's the pavlova station. The girls were great workers, but there was also a lady there named Debbie who was AMAZING. I was so grateful for her. She was also the only one who stuck around and helped me pack up at the end. I hope she gets free movie tickets or something from the family. I would have paid her about a hundred dollars if she were one of my girls. Seriously.
Thought you'd like to see some of the other decor. This bridge is over a little creek that ran right through the back of our treehouse.
String quartet.
Blue and white. See the artichoke finials? I brought almost their twins for my table. That was cool. And lucky.

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Practice arrangement

I've got a wedding I'm doing next Saturday --their theme is "French garden". I did a practice centerpiece today and I'm so excited with how it turned out I had to share. I never ask for a budget for florals from my client, so it's always just what I can scrounge from my yard, neighbors yards, and (shh!) city parks/roadside plantings. Is that wrong? I pay taxes right? I never take very many. Anyway --loved how it turned out so thought I'd share.

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