Take Home Chef

Soooo…Angie and Lynn both totally beat me to the punch on posting about the AMAZING dinner party we participated in on Friday night!

For Angie’s 30th birthday her hubby surprised her with a dinner prepared in her home by a local Chef!  And not just any dinner, but a lovely gourmet feast for six fabulous ladies!!

Amy, Tasha, me, Lynn, Angie, Jacki (& Lucy down in front!)

Chef Chris Burton lives and works locally with Shining Waters Marina and also offers a wide variety of catering and in home services.  For our evening, he arrived and prepared a six course meal right in Angie’s kitchen!

For the appies we sat around the living room and chatted while Angie opened her gifties.  I brought sparkling organic juices to serve as our “wine” in support of the baby-mama…

Our first dish was Gin-Ginger Shrimp Flambé which Chris explained was prepared using the pickled pink ginger you would normally find with sushi.  It added an amazing sweetness that totally made the dish.  I told him I could just eat those all night long. 

The second appetizer was probably my favourite dish of the night.  Poached Quail Eggs & Basil Hollandaise.  Oh My Gee.  Like a decadent perfect individual eggs benny on each little spoon.  I think I ate three, maybe four…they were THAT yummy.

After this, Chris had us move to the dining table to serve the main courses.  He started us off with Spinach & Arugula Salad drizzled with warm maple-balsamic vinaigrette, served with prosciutto wrapped pear & French goat cheese…

So amazingly right up our alley.  I may try to recreate this one at home as it was simply perfect.

A small pallet cleanser of Raspberry Sorbet garnished with fresh basil…

To prepare us for the main course…Herb Roasted AAA Beef Tenderloin with Shitake-soy emulsion…

Served with a truly unique Sweet Potato & Chickpea Mash…

The meat was perfection on a plate.  We were all pretty much in love with the sauce and asked him to explain it’s preparation as we all want to recreate it ourselves. Not sure that I ever could, but dare to dream!

I may have schmeared some seedy baguette around my plate to scour up every last drop…

The mash was an excellent dish and something quite simple to make ourselves.  I commented that it’s the perfect combo for food bloggers like us as sweet potatoes and chickpeas are constant favourites for everyone in our niche of the blogosphere. 

And believe it or not, we fit in one more course.  Dessert course! 

Warm Apple, Pear & Ginger Tart with spiced caramel and vanilla ice cream…

The combination of spices he used made this one of the most flavourful fruit desserts I have ever had.  Truly amazing way to complete our meal. 

I ate every bite!  And you know what?  I actually didn’t feel ridiculously full.  Reasonable portions at each course combined with rich and flavourful ingredients…just the way a meal like this should be.

Thank you so much to Angie’s hubby for providing this fantastic night for us gals…to Tasha for being such a great sneaky planner…and to Chef Chris for creating such an enjoyable night!  What an incredible way to celebrate our little baby-mama’s big 3-0!  *hugs*

Happy Birthday Angie!

Surprised Angie :)

Lynn and Lucy

Take Home Chef – Chris Burton

Tasha making sure the baby loves her.

Stay tuned to see what that fabulous chef put together for us!

Extra Extra

Hmmm…let’s see.  There seems to be a fair amount of shiz going down in blogland right now.

First and foremost:  Angie’s got a bun in the oven!  If you haven’t already heard, head on over and check out her post spilling the beans.  And stay tuned for a revamp and baby-mama bloggin’!

Now, have a looksie over to the right there ---> where you will see a button for the Online Bake Sale for Haiti.  Click it! The lovely Diana over at The Chic Life is raising funds for Haiti’s earthquake relief and I have offered to bake up a couple dozen of my Mayan Chocolate Sparklers (with extra sugar coating!) for the bake sale.  Have a look at the list of baked goodies and pick out something to bid on.  I already have my eye on a couple of yummy treats!

Keeping with the spirit of generosity, check out Vanessa’s giveaway at Last Night’s Leftovers.  All she asks is that you tell her about something charitable you’ve done recently and she’ll enter you in the draw for her awesome prize pack.

And since I’m flogging contests, don’t forget to enter my Amazing Grass giveaway and tell me what your resolutions or goals for 2010 are.  The draw is tomorrow! (Yes, flog is the word of the week apparently.  I’m overusing it!)

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OK, now that’s all out of the way on to the real goods.  Fooood porn!

After my early morning workout (Day 3 of Fitnessista’s Intro to Iron), I got groceries and finally made it to the post office.  I was running low on fuel, so grabbed myself a bigass latte from Starbucks to get my motor running…

Triple grande vanilla non-fat latte.  (Someone please remind me to order half sweet…I’m getting picky in my old age!)

I needed food quickly, so toast it was.  I love sunflower seeds in my bread.  Just thought you would like to know.

Toasted up with The Bee’s Knees PB, raisins and sliced banana.

Nom!!

Now, to work!

The End of the World

Angie’s Pampered Chef party was a tasty, fun success.  :)  Our consultant prepared a Mexican Chicken Lasagna for us to demo a bunch of the equipment available for purchase and to show how the stoneware works even in the microwave! 

It was yummy!

And Angie had lots of healthy snacks for us…

Bits and bites served as my lunch.  Handy.  :)

I’ll show you what I ordered when it comes in next week.

When I got home FH asked if I wanted to go to the movies so I decided just to make a salad for supper so I could indulge in movie popcorn!

 

Simply spinach, tomatoes, mushrooms and celery drizzled with grapeseed oil and fresh cracked sea salt…

We saw 2012.  I really only knew it was about the end of the world and had lots of special effects.  I really enjoyed it but admittedly laughed most of the way through.  They really went WAY over the top!  I guess they decided that since it was a pretty impossible storyline that they might as well just push it over the limit of believability.  Twas worth the 2.5 hours though!

On a separate note, why the heck did Grey’s this week jump from Thanksgiving to Christmas already?

Sun, Snacks, Sangria

Yesterday ended up being sunny, beautiful and HOT.  Weeeeeeee!  Needless to say a lot of the errands and chores I had planned didn’t get accomplished.  Didn’t make it to the gym either.  And I’m OK with that!

FH was up before me and as soon as I came downstairs he asked if I wanted to go for breakfast.  We haven’t done that in months (he was away, then we were away, then he was still away!) so I jumped at the chance.  Off to The Armview we went, where I enjoyed some much needed tasty coffee and my old standby of bacon & eggs. 

Scrambled eggs, bacon, multigrain toast, and cubed potatoes.  I left half of the toast and potatoes.  Yummy in my tummy!

When we got back I had to work for an hour to clear up some important stuff I’d forgotten on Friday, then spent another hour or so fiddling with the set up of my Blackberry.  I’m starting to get the hang of most of it now!  Still trying to figure out little things though, and I’m sure more questions will arise the more I use it.

After that I made a quick trip to the grocery store (for supplies I later ended up not needing, and berries I hadn’t planned on buying!) and to Starbucks because we ran out of coffee on Friday.  I of course got myself an iced coffee while I was there.  :)

For the rest of the day I pretty much laid out on the deck reading.  Glorious!  I rolled out a big blanket, brought a pillow and snacked on fruit and veggies and water.  Amy, I just finished Club Dead…on to book 4!

Grapes.

Carrots & celery.

Late afternoon salad: spinach, free local raspberries, BC blueberries, pecans, organic old white cheddar…drizzled with honey & EVOO.

Once the sun started to move away from the back of the house I came in to shower and get ready to head over to Angie’s for the evening.  It was still pretty sticky in the house, but thankfully by the time I got to doing my make-up and getting dressed it was pleasantly cooling off.

At Angie’s I got to help her out with her Epicure taste testing!  The nice folks at Epicure Selections sent her some sample products to review, so she mixed up a bunch of different dips for her guests to try out.  I’ll let her tell you all of the dirty details in her own blog post, but my quick review is: Summer Berry Fruit Dip and Three Onion Dip WINNERS and Roasted Red Pepper Dip LOSER. 

Honestly though, my favorite snacky wasn’t an Epicure one.  Angie made a 7 Layer Dip and I’m pretty sure I ate half of it all by myself!! 

I enjoyed one big glass of her homemade sangria over the course of the evening and it was the perfect drink to end such a beautiful day.

It was also Angie’s hubby’s birthday so being the fabulous wife that she is, she made him a cake.  A crazy decadent Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake complete with a layer of solid peanut butter cups.  Insanity! 

Thanks for the lovely evening Angie!  I didn’t get home until 2:30am.  oooooops.