S7PP: All Things Food!

After some thought and some deep digging into the inter-worlds I have decided that I really need a separate post for food stuffs.  I'm getting too distracted by the shiny stuff.

Here is what I have so far for our menu - keeping in mind that unless HBO has some sort of miracle planned, this will be the 4th-to-the-last time we get to host this thing...

3.15.17: Menu Planning

This year we will have the more people attending our little swa-ray than we ever have before so we are going to have to pull out all of the stops.  I have an oven, 2 bbq's, a smoker, and a fire pit and my goal is to have meat cooking on all of them.  Here is the plan

Meats:

Honeyed Chicken x 2

These will cook on one of the BBQ's 

Crown Roast x 2

I can get 2 beef ones or 3 pork ones on my roasting pan.  This will take the longest but will also need the most time to prep before hitting the table.

Baked herb and lemon stuffed fish x 6

These don't take very long under the broiler and can go into the oven after I pull out the crown roast.  I'll post a recipe a little later.

Citrus stuffed fire roasted beef haunch x 1

This will be going on the other BBQ and I am still working out what I am going to do to this poor delicious piece of meat...

Hopefully that will be enough... 

Sides:

Skillet Cranberries

Greens with Apples and Pine nuts

Slow Roasted Crown Roast Root Veggies

Frey Brothers Hand Pies

Snacks and Nibbles:

Dothraki Goat Balls

Fresh baked black bread

Olives

Cheese

and maaaaayyyyybbbeee scottish deviled eggs?  Maybe....

Desert:

Apple blossom tarts

Chocolate covered honey bark

I KNOW IT SEEMS LIKE A LOT!  But I have 17 people coming over... I should be able to out-source some of these to take something off our plates... hopefully... right?  *BREATH, JESSE!!*

Honorable Mentions and Other Ideas

Dream Kitchen......  

These things I found that looked amazing and that I still want to make... maybe I can squeeze them into our evening?  Or perhaps sub something else?  Hmm....

Tavern Bread - This looks RIGHT up my ally... I could probably eat this every day for the rest of my life.  I need to make it so I can be sure.  Also, I'll need LOTS of it - you know - for testing.

Nordic Stone Bread - I love me some seeds and looks absolutely delicious.  This would be fantastic topped with some butter or even a fried egg for breakfast... I am seeing many possibilities... must experiment...

Wassail - I know I have mentioned this before in this blog because we make it for just about every large gathering.  This stuff is AMAZING and if you haven't made it, you should.  We won't be making it for our premier party, though sadly, HBO decided to throw us a curve and host their season in the middle of summer.... Summer in California doesn't make for warm comforting beverages.  I'll have another post down the road with what we come up with in the way of beverages - some of my cookbooks have ideas that I might need to pillage.

Viking Apple Bacon - This looks pretty simple and equally yummy... we might have to squeeze this on in somewhere.  I like easy... I like delicious.  I'm easy that way.  Could you imagine serving this on a slice of crusty bread and topped with a poached egg? I just did....

Of course, none of this would have been possible in the first place if I hadn't stumbled into InnAtTheCrossroads.com - those guys are my heroes.  I've been away too long.  <3

4.5.17

We're SO doing this....

I found this on twitter and I gotta say, it's #brilliant.  I will have to have the hubs burn some little smokies and call them "Farmboy Fingers" to add...  muhahahaha

If you have a sensitive disposition, perhaps Game of Thrones isn't your speed, eh?  

I just purchased the perfect plate for these to go on too!  I could even add the Scottish deviled eggs-  The more I think about those though, the more I am certain I'll have to search for some quail eggs instead of doing the regular sized chicken eggs... smaller... more bite sized... better.....

Challenge accepted.

More to come!

S7PP: Mini Dragon Eggs of Awesome

 These are so neat... I saw THIS picture here and thought "You know, I am a pretty craft savvy person, I could make those IN MY SLEEP!."  So I broke out my paints and my markers and my trusty little crafting board - I picked a few different colored eggs and painted them very carefully doing my very best to get as much paint on my fingers as humanly possible.  

Then I let them dry...

Then I grabbed my brand new sharpies and...... 

So... I went back to the tutorial and discovered that they didn't just jump into the burning water with no bathing suit - they actually spray painted them with a white primer that sticks well to plastic before painting them.  That might have made things easier....

We will try again this weekend... I need to make a trip to my local neighborhood friendly craft store first....  Bleh.

4.5.17

I went on Amazon today to look for some amazing things to stuff into these eggs and I came across some 7" jumbo eggs... so I bought them!  I had to come up with some fun things to put in them though so I got some stuff to blow my tax return on this year... Here are some of the things I got for these -

 

I'll break up the sets as much as possible - the little skeleton warriors, dragon, and the armed men come in a bundle - think little green army men for cool people.  I really want to paint the skeleton dudes grey and give them blue eyes but we'll see how ambitious I am here... I'll also have some extra candies, chocolate coins and other goodies to throw in as needed.  I think the hubs is going to get a little blind box for each egg too - all told, each egg will probably end up costing me about $10/each but I am only doing 12.  (TWELVE THAT'S ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY SMACKEROOS, JES YOWZA!) I know... I know... but guys, this is the second to the last time we will be able to do this and I want to make it AMAZEBALLS.  Most of my posse has been drooling over my hand made dragon eggs for years and it's only fair that I send them home with one at SOME POINT.  I'll toss in some of the kazoos of winter that I have from S3 - still have tons of those for some reason....

Easter is right around the corner, guys - if this is a project you want to take on, better git on it!

:D

4.25.17

Last night my ex-mother-in-law passed away suddenly... and although there was no love lost between the two of us, it was still a gut wrenching evening as I tried to console my 8 year old who, as horrible as she was, loved her dearly.  We spent some time together last night crying together and holding each other - I told him that in times like these sometimes it makes me feel better to keep my hands busy and he agreed so on a whim, and IN THE HOUSE (bad idea, bad idea, bad idea...) we spray painted eggs!  There were lots of hugging breaks but he did a great job wielding the can and was smiling  while making a huge mess - even if it was just for a moment we could get him to feel better... before the fumes created a toxic cloud in my craft room and we had to evacuate... more to come...

5.1.17

What a crazy weekend!  My poor deaf, blind and seizure-prone senior dog escaped from the back yard and we lost him for a few days... I was a WRECK!  So in a feeble attempt to keep some sanity about me as I frantically checked the lost and found section of Craigslist and with the local animal shelters, I worked on my eggs.  When you're crafting while you're extremely stressed, it's called "STRAFTING."  I did much strafting this weekend.  I started a new project but got to work on these a bit too - and I have some tips for you - here is what I have:

I only have two colors done so far but will paint the green and gold ones during an A's game.  Here are some quick tips to help you with these monsters:

• Use a GIANT marker!  For the large eggs like this, you really need something with some UMPH.  Your standard sharpie isn't going to cut it.  Do yourself a favor and buy a box of the giant Marks-A-Lot markers - these ones were done with the standard markers and I really just hated every frustrating second of it.  
• Don't press too hard!  Though you primed them like a boss, the paint will still come off if you press with your marker too hard.   You'll spend a lot of time teaching your toddler curse words if you do this... (voice of experience...)
• Fill your eggs BEFORE you draw your scales! I didn't do this the first time and ended up spending way more time than I needed to trying to line the scales back up...
• Draw your scales with a light pencil before you draw them with your marker.

 


I will keep working on these more and more as we get closer - once they're finished I'll post the final product for you.  If you have questions be sure to leave them in the comments!


oooo what are those other eggs, Jess?  I'll start another post about those effers now!  Squee!!!

S7 Premier Party - White Board....

Here are the things I WANT to do.... lets see if I can pull it off.  This is an ever-changing post so keep checking back for updates!

3.14.17 - Found these... and remembered that my son has had a pack of these stupid eggs sitting on his dresser since last year and he keeps saying he's going to use them.... MINE NOW!  Gotta find my paints and my brushes... Mess, here I come!  Good thing Easter is right around the corner and egg candy will be plentiful.

I found them at this amazing website - they have lots of other tempting ideas too - maybe something else will jump out at you?  Like that beautiful and surely delicious Nights Watch cocktail?  Mmmmmmm huminah.

They mention the Game of Thrones board game - which we have - and I have to say, if you love board games, you'll love this one, it's worth picking up.  It takes a long time to play and don't play with someone who is a strategy ho - like House Lee.  They win every time, EVERY TIME!



I also found a recipe for Honey Bark .... and oh my stars, I LOVE honey bark!  Naturally, this is a must to send my soldiers home with... Alejandra does a fantastic job laying out the tutorial on making this amazing desert.  I'm not a baker, I am a cook and usually you are either one or the other so here is to hoping I don't flub it up.  Could you imagine this stuff dipped in dark chocolate and sprinkled with toffee pieces?  We could call it a Dornish delicacy!  You could even get SUPER authentic and stick a dead cricket on the top, heck, why not?

Too far.... sorry... lets just stick with toffee bits... mmmmm

3.15.17: Menu Planning

This year we will have the more people attending our little swa-ray than we ever have before so we are going to have to pull out all of the stops.  I have an oven, 2 bbq's, a smoker, and a fire pit and my goal is to have meat cooking on all of them.  Here is the plan

Meats:

Honeyed Chicken x 2

These will cook on one of the BBQ's 

Crown Roast x 2

I can get 2 beef ones or 3 pork ones on my roasting pan.  This will take the longest but will also need the most time to prep before hitting the table.

Baked herb and lemon stuffed fish x 6

These don't take very long under the broiler and can go into the oven after I pull out the crown roast.  I'll post a recipe a little later.

Citrus stuffed fire roasted beef haunch x 1

This will be going on the other BBQ and I am still working out what I am going to do to this poor delicious piece of meat...

Hopefully that will be enough... 

Sides:

Skillet Cranberries

Greens with Apples and Pine nuts

Slow Roasted Crown Roast Root Veggies

Frey Brothers Hand Pies

Snacks and Nibbles:

Dothraki Goat Balls

Fresh baked black bread

Olives

Cheese

and maaaaayyyyybbbeee scottish deviled eggs?  Maybe....

Desert:

Apple blossom tarts

Chocolate covered honey bark

I KNOW IT SEEMS LIKE A LOT!  But I have 17 people coming over... I should be able to out-source some of these to take something off our plates... hopefully... right?  *BREATH, JESSE!!*

S7PP: Theme and Invitation - A work in progress....

This season is going to be the second to the last - and a shorter one at that so of course we know that the dead and the realms of men are headed for an epic clash.  Naturally, we need able bodied soldiers to protect us.  Our evening will be centered around the battle - "War Is Coming"....

This is just the preliminary graphic - I haven't decided what to do with them yet.... I could mail them... I could tie them with some string to a crow and land them on their cars.... I could take the easy way out and just post it on Facebook (not my style but alas....) Still brainstorming this... more updates will be forthcoming.. ideas ideas so many ideas.....

In the mean time, you need one you can customize - here is one that's ready to go - just have to come up with a snazy name for your venue!

3.15.17: I worked on these a bit last night and I gotta say, this was fun!  It was a little scary, though, as I was playing with the ax while my toddler was next to me incredibly interested in everything I was doing.  (Don't worry, I didn't start swinging until I was absolutely sure daddy had a hold of her on the other side of the room...)

I took my small stacks of invites and my ax and whacked away!  I banged on them with both sides of the hammer and hit them with some nails and really just beat the crap out of them.

We weren't done yet though...

We then took one of the seven (YES, SEVEN) boxes of food coloring out of our cabinet (No idea who we managed to amass that much food coloring....) and used them to discolor the pages.  We did this in a shallow cookie sheet and with only blue, red and yellow food coloring (not green!) We poured a cup of water in the cookie sheet and dropped food coloring in random spots on the cookie sheet.  We did not mix them the first time and after dipping a page in the mixture it just looked like a unicorn sharted all over the thing... Pretty!  But not the look we were going for.  It needed more mixing...

What you see below is what we ended up with.  More to come.

Season 7, Premier party! Let the planning insanity begin! (oh boy...)

Well.... The awesome thing is that my best friends will be driving down from Washington to spend the week with us and will just happen to be with us for their first taste of allll the hooplah.

The stressful thing is that since they will be here, and since it's the second to the last time we will ever be able to host this event, my husband wants to invite freaking everybody.  *deep breath deep breath, deep breath!*

So the planning begins.  July 16th is not that far away and we have lots of work to do if we want to host an amazing party for .... 17 people.....  *deep breath deep breath, deep breath!*

I know, it doesn't seem like a lot... and I already have some great ideas, plus I'll have 2 extra sets of hands to help us with the preparations.  The thing that bothers me the most is the logisticals... I don't have enough plates... I don't have enough chairs... I don't have enough butt space on my couch. .. *sigh* most of these things can be solved with some shopping but we can't be going nuts like we did that one year...  Lets see how much of this we can do on a budget!  Thrift stores, here we come!  Of course, I will be sharing my findings here.

This season we have to do a few very important things:

• Come up with a theme....  
• The North Wants You!
• Create the invitations
• Done, and super awesome, I might add....
• Create house sigils for new allies to the North
• Pending.... not sure if I'll actually get around to doing this for alllll of our new bannermen....
• Create a killer (pun intended!) menu
• See the "All About Food" post!  Can't wait to start playing!
• Plan for favors and things to send home
• Ordered giant Easter eggs to paint and fill with stuff! I think I have a post on this?  I'll have to look...
• Figure out annoying logisticals (plates, chairs, butt space...)
• Already started looking at eBay - My advice, get started NOW if you have this problem!  You can find some amazing stuff and you don't want to wait until the last minute!  
• Update the Death Pool board (OOOOOO!!!!!  Hodor, nooo!)
• Work out nitty gritties so nothing gets left out
• Share my madness with all of you lucky duckies.

As always, I hope this blog can serve as a guide to help you create an amazing party too!  Feel free to snag any images you like for your own party and let me know if you have other ideas you'd like me to add.

Lets get it started!

War Is Coming.....

It has begun....

The Hermit's Game of Thrones Party

The Hermit's Game of Thrones Party

For those of us who love to party but hate the people part of it..

It's very easy for me to imagine a kick-ass Game of Thrones party for just myself.  As much as I love to wow my guests with these amazing treats (and I really do) a lot of the things I put together are things I intend to keep at home for just me.  Hello, Dragon eggs.  Hello, Wall of Sigils.  Hello Apothecary set.  I figure if my husband can nerd-out over Amiibos then I can have my collection of quirky awesomeness as well.  Throwing a party for just yourself is not anything to be ashamed of - or embarrassed by at all!  It just takes a little prep and legwork to have yourself a fine feast and a show.  

The first thing you'll need for your party is a fancy invite - depending of course on how far into this you want to go.  You can skip this part if you don't want a memento of your amazing evening.  

Over the years, I have come up with several that have been a big hit but yours doesn't need to be so fancy.  This one here is from Innatthecrossroads.com and is available for you to download and customize.  Simply print it out, roll it up, and tie it to the foot of one of these to perch on your microwave.  Now your invite has been sent and you just have to wait for a response.

Now, we need to settle on a menu.  The possibilities here are as endless as the yellow sea but I've put together some ideas that will leave you with some leftovers but not completely drowning in food.  

Main Dish

Spiced Honeyed Harpie

(with or without stuffing... but that stuffing is awfully good.)

Sides

Roasted leeks and root vegetables

Appetizer

Scottish Deviled Eggs

Dessert

Cherries and fresh whipped cream

We will talk about the food prep a little further down. 

Next, we have to take care of dishes and decor.  For this, I hope you don't turn your nose up at the idea of a thrift store but they are your friends in times like these unless you want to spend an arm and a leg on new stuff from Etsy/Amazon/Ebay.  I always hit the thrift store first, you can find some amazing things there.  For example, a few weeks ago I had to hit one on the way home to find some old cake pans my son and I could destroy by making sun catches and I happened upon some pretty awesome candle holders, several silver trays, and an old cast-iron serving dish that was, like, $3.00.  I had to talk myself out of the glass goblets - they were incredible but alas, we already have some pretty stellar metal ones.  And my husband would have killed me.  

The cool thing about the thrift stores is that you're not committed to buying things as a set.  A lot of the time they will price things by the piece and you'll be free to put together your own special table setting for your own amazing party.  Here is a list of things you'll want to consider:

• 1 wooden bowl
• 1 large metal serving platter
• 1 medium or small sized platter for your dish
• 2 candle holders
• 1 big glass or ceramic bowl
• 1 large wine goblet
• 1 metal mug

Next take a gander though the blog here and see if you are ambitious enough to take any of the larger projects on.  Even a door sign will help transport you to Westeros on GoT day.  These will also help with your decor.

Now that it's Game of Thrones day, and you're just about ready to start your food adventure.  If you're sticking to my menu above, you'll need some things from the grocery store unless they're already laying around your house.  

Spiced Honeyed Harpie:

A little different from the Inn's version - in this version you're going to get yourself either 1 or 2 cornish game hens - depending on how much food you want to eat tomorrow... Before you do anything to them, make sure they are rinsed and dried and there are no presents sitting in the cavities of them.  The link above will walk you through the needs of your recipe but since you're only stuffing itty bitty birds, you can easily half the list of ingredients.  

Roasted Leeks and Root Vegetables

 A staple in our house and REALLY (REALLY) easy to make - you'll need 1 leek, 2 carrots, a parsnip and a smallish yellow potato.  The leek prep is a little tricky and you have to rinse them after you cut them to get all the dirt off.  To accomplish this, simply cut the leek diagonally into slices and drop them into a bowl full of water - separate the rings as best you can and give them a good jooge - the dirt sinks while the leeks (Rhymes with Reek..) floats to the top.   Dry them off on a paper towel while you're chopping up the rest of your veg.

All of your veggies should be chopped to about the same size so that they roast evenly and they don't have to be chopped up super small in order to accomplish this.  Big rough cuts on all of your washed veggies will work just wonderfully.  Toss them all (leeks too!) into a bowl with some olive oil and your favorite herbs (thyme is wonderful with these...) and coat them all well.  Then transfer your coated veggies to your roasting dish and put them in a 300 degree oven for 30 minutes.  After they've had some time to roast, take them out and NOW they are ready for your birds.  These hens don't take long to roast and if you do a pre-roasting they'll be finished with your hens and all will be well in your kingdom.  Turn the temp up on your oven to 350 and roast until the internal temp is at least 165.

Scottish Deviled Eggs

Mmmm... I love these.   You can find my adventure with these here.

Cherries and Fresh Whipped Cream

You will need the following ingredients for these:

• Fresh cherries
• powdered sugar
• heavy cream
• vanilla extract

Here your mixing bowl will get a work-out.  Just add 1 cup of powdered sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract, and 1 pint of heavy whipping cream to your mixing bowl and whip it (whip it good!) til it's fluffy and delicious.  Wash off your cherries and put them in a bowl and plop some of this goodness on top.  Viola.  An easy desert - and after all of that work, you deserve it.  

Remember that large serving platter you got at the thrift store?  Put your veggies on it, stuffing, bird(s) and appetizers on it and take it to your living room.  Pour yourself your favorite wine or (AND!) ale in your pretty cups.  Set yourself up a little picnic with your new plate and some silverware in front of your TV (don't forget to light some candles!) and kick up your feet!  Winter is coming but at least you won't go hungry.  

If you have other ideas for the Hermits Game of Thrones party (Put on some eye-liner and order a pizza?)  feel free to comment!

Valar Morghulis!