S6PP: MULLIGANS!

Season 6 Premier Party: Mulligans!

After all - sometimes we all need a do-over.

Good intentions are all good unless you completely drop the ball and get caught up in baby-land thus letting your awesome party plans crash down in a fiery inferno.  As fun as it is to come up with all of these wonderful ideas to wow the masses it's kind of pointless unless you can actually pull it off, right?

With that being said, we are hosting ANOTHER Direwolf Adoption Day at Castle Forrest for our premier party - - since the last one wasn't really as fancy and amazing as I would have liked it to be.  And luckily, since I didn't actually pull this off to my standards last year, I can pull up all of my files and tweak some minor things and I'll be in business once again!

The great thing about doing these every year is that I always have left over stuff from the year before.  Let's start with the invitations (posted above).

I had to do some digging since in the recent move, my apothecary kit from 2013 was buried in the garage somewhere but luckily, my amazing husband was able to find it so I could pull out the wax sealing set stored inside.  Unfortunately in the move, the Basilisk Venom jar leaked and drenched the inside of my box with thick green goo...  That was a fun mess to clean up...

I attached the invitation to the menu... (ahh yes, the food - we'll get to that in a minute, I promise you!) and waxed sealed them shut.  I then addressed them with a gold pen which to be honest doesn't really show up on the yellow parchment all that great so if you can find a black sharpie somewhere in your house and not lost in a box in your garage like a sad and lonely needle in a messed up haystack then I would suggest using that. I would have loved to burn the edges on these a bit to give them a little more age but they look just dandy as is.  Last thing I need is to burn down my house and knowing my luck, we will just leave that one alone.


The other thing I will do to make our adoption day a success is print pamphlets for each persons plate so they can learn about the good our amazing made-up foundation is doing to help the direwolves.  I used all the ones I made up from last year but had to make one more....  (sadface..)

These will be fantastic conversation pieces as I am in the kitchen making everything beautiful.

Good Help is Hard To Find....

My amazing and loving husband has brought to my attention that some of these files have some spelling errors.  I very gently told him that the WSPVBMCD is a non-profit organization, and thus, is currently looking for educated scholars to assist in creating our propaganda.  Sadly, the bakers wife has only the most minimal of grammatical education and thus, is not keen to pick up such remedial mistakes such as these.  I appreciated his feedback, however, and will be looking for a new writing wench after I clean up the blood from the direwolf pen... 

In short ... I had better get around to fixing that - this of course, after I printed them all and beautified them... grr.. If you see any more please let me know!

Now... lets talk about the GRUB.

Starters:

I try to keep this simple - as we all know, the real show-stopper is always the main dish, right?  No one likes a bridesmaid who tries to outdo the bride, after all.  Most of my guests usually like to save themselves for the meal anyway so the odds that you have leftovers on the starters is high.  

I will be getting most of these from the store - ready to eat.  A loaf of olive bread from the bakery, a small container of fresh kalamata olives from the deli department, some prosciutto wrapped mozzarella also from the deli department, some smoked cheese and some hummus.  The only thing I will be making is the stuffed chilies that I have made before from InnAtTheCrossroads.com - who I have said time and time again are the air with which I breathe - these women are amazing and I definitely have a girl crush on their wonder.  You can find that recipe here.

I do make some changes with it though - I use smoked gouda instead of sharp cheddar, I add just a dash of sriracha because - well, why not?  That stuff is awesome.  You can omit that if you like though.  The only other thing that I am going to play with is that when making these amazing little nuggets of awesome, the corn flake coating doesn't stick very well to the skin of the jalepeno.  It's a real problem since you really want as much of that crunchy goodness as possible so I am going to try scoring the skin and roughing it up a bit to give the egg wash some texture to grab on to.  If that doesn't work... well, I'm not quite sure what, I'll have to play with it a bit.  

The Main Event:

A delectable Crown Roast stuffed with a delightfully hearty Oaten Stuffing served on a bed of slow roasted leeks and root vegetables.  Fit for a king.

Word food porn.  Mmmmm.

Sounds yummy, don't it?  Thank you again to my homies at InnAtTheCrossroads.com for providing the inspiration to this dish, you can find that recipe for this here.

I chose this dish because I sort of fancy myself a rib-aficionado... You can't get enough ribs in life, I promise you.  And the presentation of these is spot on for our premier party.   I am planning to do 2 racks but I'll deviate from the recipe just a bit - I'm going to tie off the ribs and roast them in the oven at 225 for 1.5 - 2 hours on a bed of chopped leaks, onions, garlic and carrots so that the rib juices saturate the veggies giving them a deliciously smoky flavor.  It is important to note, however, that when roasting veggies with your meat, you want to give them a light coating of olive oil and whatever spices you'd like so they don't burn.  There is a time and a place for blackened veggies and this ain't it!

Once they hit the 90 minute mark in the oven, I'll very carefully take them out and wrap the bottoms with bacon, stuff them, give my veggies a good turn and pop them all back in the oven to party for another 2-3 hours at 375 as the recipe indicates.  Why the extra cooking, you ask?  Well because I like my ribs SUPER tender and this should do the trick.  If you like them to stick to the bone a bit more you can omit the pre-cooking part and just follow the amazing recipe!

All Things Must End:

As always, we will be making a batch of Wildling Cider and White Walkers (Iced milk with honey plus vodka) - we have these with every party and they are always a big hit.  We run out every.time.

I have linked the Wildling Cider recipe for you but you'll have to fork over some dough to the ladies at the Inn for their amazing cookbook as the recipe for iced milk with honey can be found there.  You can also buy it on Amazon.

I will serve these with some Jammie Dodgers renamed The Mountains Tea Biscuits - because there is something strangely satisfying about picturing the MOUNTAIN with dainty little tea biscuits - pinky out and all.  We are keeping the ending SUPER SIMPLE as, you know me, we will have TONS of leftovers if folks are still hungry but they won't be... we will be rolling them out to their cars once the night is over..

Speaking of leftovers - Don't forget your doggie bags!

Good luck on planning your party - there is STILL TIME!  Lots of it, in fact (and sadly...) I hope some of these things were able to inspire you.  If you have questions or requests please let me know!

VALAR MORGHULIS.  All men must die.