have a tasty champagne thursday!

Ok. So this is a teensy bit fussy. Well, maybe more than a "teensy bit". All right. Fine. It's silly with fussines, but totally worth it.

Do try the Crab Towers with Avocado and Gazpacho Salsas from Cook's Illustrated: Restaurant Favorites at Home. It took about an hour to prepare (chop, chop, chop) and the leftovers were still quite yummy the next day. We enjoyed the delightful towers with orange slices (as recommended), tomato rubbed toast points, and Siverwing NV Brut, a lovely Australian sparkling wine.

A fortuitous mistake lead to my only deviation from the recipe. I mistakenly added the mayo to the whole batch of vinaigrette which had included all of the lemon zest on hand. Oops. As I had 16 oz of lump crab (go Costco!), the extra dressing came in handy. Anyway, I still needed vinaigrette for the frisee, so I mixed up another batch and substituted orange zest for the lemon. Yum!

mmm, mmm good

so, the marinated shrimp with champagne beurre blanc from champagne thursday was devine! we had smaller shrimp (31-40/lb) on hand, so i cooked them in a grill pan instead of under the broiler. and since it was a main course, i served the shrimp over baby greens and asparagus that had been steamed in the left over marinade.

next time i'll only use 3/4 c of butter in the beurre blanc, as the full amount was a bit much.

ps. the o cuvee vinegar is fantastic. i tossed the greens in just a touch of evoo and some o along with s&p. yum!

champagne thursday

happy champagne thursday! doesn't this recipe for marinated shrimp with champagne beurre blanc sound delish? as i am the boss of dinner tonight, this will be the main course. perhaps accompanied by some grilled asparagus and an extra bottle of saint-germain...

stay tuned for the review.

Thanks, Martha!

While perusing Martha Stewart Living in December, I came across this great idea.












So, loosely following the instructions in the mag, we used graham crackers to build "gingerbread" houses. It was a sticky, gloppy, finger licking mess. In other words, big fun.

Notice how much our houses looked like Martha's. Hmmmm...

And just when you thought you couldn't eek any more fun out of a graham cracker...mass destruction of our little village ensued. Several days after construction the kids chowed down on what could only be described as the stalest snack in the history of ever.

Good times.