We had some cabernet that we used in the sauce for the hens, (meaning we had to TASTE IT before using it), some Merlot that I don't think I tried, but .... Greg Norman makes wines??? ... it was my sister in law's bottle... and later with dessert we had an ice wine that tasted like hard apple cider.
I made sourdough bread to go with the spinach salad.... which is rather ugly here but tasted wonderful with raspberry walnut vinaigrette. 
We let everyone eat salad while the hens were getting to a temp that wouldn't kill us all... it took much longer than the recipe indicated it would. Perhaps because the little buggers were still a wee bit frozen. We didn't actually stuff the hens... part of our delay was thawing them in the microwave and we decided to sacrifice presentation for safety.
The stuffing was onion, celery, cornbread, sausage, shrimp, and some regular bread crumbs (which I think I made too soggy by adding too much chicken broth, but OH my gosh I could have just sat down with a fork and eaten a plate of stuffing and gone away happy). Whoever edited down the restaurant-quantity recipe for the magazine article we were following was NOT really concentrating... we had enough stuffing to fill a roaster pan that you would make your holiday turkey in. For 8 tiny little hens with a body cavity smaller than my tea mug.
Live and learn. It's in gladware now, and we will all eat more one or two days from now with new, decidedly less glamourous chicken. We saved the extra (red wine/ blackberry jam) glaze by freezing it in an ice cube tray, so we can pop one or two cubes out to make a boring dinner a bit less so. My brother in law helpfully compared the glaze to blood at every opportunity.
(We gave the kids just plain boneless chicken, with a pile of stuffing on the side, and they complained about ewwww, lemon juice on the beans. Tough crowd.)
And, you've seen the cupcakes, but here's one more.
You can see a few more photos on my flickr/feed if you're still hungry. Exciting things, like the cheeses we had (one was brie with apricot jam... but we didn't bake it... we have learned to focus on one or two dishes and not try to compete with a top chef finalist in making an over the top menu... ), the stuffing in preparation, and so on.... and the roses. What's valentine's day without overpriced roses ? (Mine, haha. I instituted a ban on $75 roses several years ago.) OK, now I am just being mean, because my sister in law has only been married a few years, and she loves her roses. I'm sorry.
We joked about having our own cooking show, but each episode would be more of a miniseries. (This would be why we serve so many snacks while our family patiently waits for the big entree. )
Well, I'm late for stuff so I've gotta get going.... will someone help with the dishes??
1 comment:
sounds like a wonderful time!!
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