This past weekend was The Soiree of 2011* and it was spectacular, spectaculoso, spectaculovelicious, etc. My aunt fairly outdid herself.

Each soiree has the same general outline: a noon lunch extraordinaire on the veranda, an activity, dinner out, and Sunday morning brunch. The specifics of these events are top secret. My aunt likes to build excitement by sending us photos of all the boxes arriving on her doorstep. Bonus activities: some sort of verbal game, a divvying up of my aunt’s hand-me-downs (this can be uproarious funny—like this time when another aunt waltzed around the room with her jeans down around her ankles), our gifts to her and hers to us. (Yes, she gives us a gift. I wasn’t joking about the outdoing herself part.)

This year, the noon-time meal lasted nearly four hours. There was vichysoisse, a shaved summer squash salad, and the star of the show, paella.

While my aunt stirred and simmered and seasoned, we stood around the pan and kept up a worshipful commentary.

Only one person, my mother, assumed the correct position.

She’d probably like me to tell you she was checking the flame, not worshiping, but I’ll let you be the judge.

Do you know how hard it is to cook while surrounded by a bunch of opinionated Mennonite cooks? Considering the high-levels of stress under which she was operating, I’m surprised my aunt didn’t whack anyone with a clammy lobster.

But indeed she didn’t and all the lobsters made it into the paella and then onto our plates and into our tummies, yummy, yummy.

After we drained our mugs of coffee and scraped the last bit of brown sugar frosting from our plates, we piled into cars and shuttled across town to the not-yet-disclosed entertainment…

…which turned out to be an art studio where we dabbled in oil paints and created a red flower each. (Hospital scrubs courtesy of my doctor aunt.)

The instructor had the habit of walking up behind you and painting on our paintings, which irked my aunt, mother, and I to high heaven. Clearly, the teacher was an instructor and not an artist because what artist will paint on another person’s paintings? That’s right—they don’t. So when the instructor bore down on my aunt’s painting, she screeched, “Don’t touch it!” And when she encroached on my space, I struck a discreet but effective defensive pose and timidly squeaked, “I’ll do it myself?” And thus I kept my painting instructor-stroke free.

The art session made me kick myself for not taking art all four years of high school. I never got to oil paintings, and oil paintings are a heck of a lot of fun. This I now know.

By the time we walked into the restaurant at 8 o’clock, I was, amazingly enough, beginning to get hungry again. Our dishes came family-style, so we got to sample everything which made us all glow with happiness and contentment. Beef, shrimp, oysters, chicken, salads, and vegetables, oh my. And then panna cotta, cheesecake, tiramisu and red velvet cake, oh my my. Completely sated, I slumped back in my seat and wished I might magically be floated home on a cloud.

It was at dinner that my aunt told us she had called all our husbands and asked them six questions. They had to email her the answers and the following morning we would try to correctly guess their answers. Whoever got the most answers right would be declared the winner.

These were the questions:

1. What is your wife’s most annoying habit?
2. If your wife had to choose between three cities to live in—Atlanta, Dallas, and San Francisco—which would she choose and why?
3. What is your favorite way to have a potato prepared?
4. Which of your wife’s girlfriends do you find the most attractive?
5. What color does your wife wear the most?
6. Where was your first kiss? Be specific.

There was much howling and hooting as each new question was revealed. But we weren’t allowed to say the answers until the Sunday brunch.

Sunday morning we all gathered in the sunroom for coffee and chit-chat (it’s becoming a tradition) and then a walk to the bakery for breakfast breads. Brunch was yet another feast of eggs, bacon, paella, fruit, coffee, juice, and more breads and biscotti than was decent (but I’m not complaining, no, no, no).

We took turns answering the quiz questions while my aunt checked our answers against what our husbands wrote. I got all of them right (except number 3—potatoes fried in bacon fat, huh?—and number 6 because he got it wrong) (oh, and except number 1, though I got it right on the second try, which was my first guess but I second-guessed myself, duh), but it made me inordinately happy that we got number 2 right. I said, “San Francisco because La Brea Bakery is there,” (which was wrong because La Brea Bakery is in Los Angeles but how am I supposed to keep that straight when I’ve never been there?), and then my aunt read his answer, “San Francisco, because there are cafés and bakeries,” and I was all like, “Aw shoot, my honey knows me!”

Before we left drove away, there was an assortment of Jeni’s macaroon ice cream sandwiches in honor of my birthday.

Exotic flavors included Earl Grey, scarlet (I never knew scarlet was a flavor) and orchid vanilla, pistachio, and my favorite, salted caramel.

Oh, and there was a rousing chocolate taste testing. We tasted with such enormous dedication and thoroughness that you would’ve thunk our lives depended on it. Though I forget which one came in first…

Did I mention there were babies in attendance? A girl and a boy, twelve and thirteen weeks respectively. My aunt couldn’t have lined up better in-house entertainment if she had tried.

This handsome butterball was a cuddle bum—he’d melt into the arms of whoever was holding him.

And this one has the habit of sucking her right thumb while holding the top of her head with her left hand. I can hardly stand the sweetness!

There is something special, nay precious, about getting together with the women (and nursing babes) in my family and talking our fool heads off for twenty-four hours straight. What a luxury. What a gift. Thank you, auntie hostess dear.

*Previous soirees: soiree of 2009, soiree of 2010

This same time, years previous: painting my belly, roasted butternut squash salad, a jiggle on the wild side, stream of consciousness, my beginnings

Cooking with meat always throws me for a loop. I don’t work with it enough because it’s so dang expensive, and when I do work with it, I quake all over cause I don’t want to mess it up since it’s so dang expensive, plus all that work. Plus, the cost. Did I mention the cost? The stakes are high.

But then I roasted two chickens the most basic way possible and the meat was so good that I nearly ate half a chicken during the de-boning process. When my oldest daughter came into the chicken, I mean kitchen—kitchen!—she took one look at the pile of bones and set to wailing, “But I wanted to eat a whole chicken for supper!” Because chicken tastes better when it looks like chicken, obviously.

Simple Roast Chicken
With inspiration from The Best Way To Roast a Turkey, by Aimee of Simple Bites

1 whole chicken
3-4 tablespoons butter
salt
black pepper

Rinse the chicken and place on a roasting pan—in other words, a pan with sides. Smear dabs of butter all over the outside of the chicken and inside the cavity. I’m serious here. You want to grease that baby up good.

Salt and pepper the chicken inside and out. You’ll probably use at least a teaspoon of salt and a half teaspoon of black pepper, but it depends on the size of your bird.

Roast the chicken at 400 degrees for 20 minutes before reducing the temperature to 350 degrees and roasting for another hour or so. Not that I know anything about times, though. The way I check for doneness is by look (is it dark golden brown all over?) and leg flexibility (does the leg move easily when wiggled back and forth?). If the answer to both questions is yes, then it’s done. Or else you can just roast it to death. That works, too.

Allow it to rest, covered with foil, at room temperature for 15-30 minutes before devouring.

Note: Don’t waste oven heat—roast two birds at time. Leftovers freeze splendidly. Bonus, each kid gets a leg = no fighting.

P.S. I wanted to title this post “Put a bird on it,” but it didn’t exactly fit, so I refrained. But it’s how I refer to this post…in my head.

This same time, years previous: one hot chica

Don’t you hate it when you post a recipe and tell everyone how great it is and then find another recipe that is similar but way much better and then you have to decide what to do with that recipe you thought was so wonderful but is really rather awful now that you’ve seen the light? Yes? I hate that.

Remember that two-minute peanut butter chocolate cake I wrote about? The one I thought was so fun and kind of quirky and rather yummy? Delete it from your memory, m’dearies, and make this instead.

I had reservations with the previous cake (there was that spongy texture from the egg), but with this one I have none (no eggs!). Making and eating it was the highlight of my day yesterday. Just ask my mother. Just ask my husband. Just ask my kids.

The other reason I hesitate to write about this recipe is because it makes me look like all I do is cook and post Julie recipes (and I have another one of hers waiting in the wings!), but facts are facts, and nine times out of ten Julie hits the nail on the head. She knows her food and does a lovely job making it accessible to the average cook. She’s one of my main sources of inspiration.

So anyway, she wrote about these brownies and I thought, oh posh, whatever. I am so not into microwave cooking. That is, like, way below me.

I waited a whole six days before giving it a go.

And then I swooned my fool head off and made two batches and got a major case of Sugar Highitis. My side kick efficiently executed the taste-testing portion of the job and cleaned up every bowl I placed in front of him.

True, he didn’t give much quotable feedback, but there was lots of sticky lip-smacking. I understood what he was saying just fine.

Julie calls these cakes “brownies,” and with that name, I take issue. They are definitely more of a pudding cake, or maybe a molten chocolate cake. Or maybe that’s just because I underbaked them? There certainly is an element of brownie, no doubt about it. In any case, the top was fudgy and cakey and the bottom was chocolate-y syrupy and combined with the ice cream, it was perfection.

The best thing about these babes is their immediacy. I like something sweet and cakey with my afternoon coffee but often there is nothing to be had (yes, it’s true!) and I get all woeful and forlorn. However! These cakes, these glorious cakes, have smacked that problem into oblivion and beyond.

Here’s how I do it: while the kids finish up their lunch, I stir together the dry ingredients. I make my coffee, reserving two tablespoons for the batter. As the children scamper oh-so-cheerfully (not) off to their rooms, I mix the wet with the dry, divide the batter between two small ramekins (putting one in the fridge for later), and microwave the remaining dish for thirty seconds. A bit of vanilla ice cream scooped on top and I’m all set for my happy computer, caffeine, sugar, chocolate time.

One of my friends left a comment on the previous two-minute cake post that read: “It’s too quick and easy. I need hurdles.” So, in her honor, I’m naming these miracles…

Hurdle-Free Molten Brownie Cakes
Adapted from Dinner with Julie

I’ve been experimenting like a crazy chocoholic. See below for adaptations and notes.

The coffee flavor comes through loud and strong. It’s a key player.

1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
pinch of salt
2 tablespoons flavorless oil (I use canola)
2 tablespoons strong coffee (or milk or water)

Mix dry ingredients, add wet, and stir to combine. Divide batter between two, ungreased ramekins. Cover one ramekin with plastic and refrigerator for later. Microwave the other for 30 seconds. Top with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and eat with a spoon (not a fork, like you see in the pictures—I was being a dorkus).

Variations:
*Reduced Sugar: reducing brown sugar to 2 packed tablespoons yields less molten and more brownie.

*Chocolate Chips: unnecessary additional sweet.

*Espresso: 1/4 teaspoon grounds and milk instead of coffee—not much flavor.

*Whipped Cream: not dense enough to stand up to the warm cake.

*Heath Bar Chips sprinkled on top: meh (too much chemically flavor).

This same time, years previous: soiree 2010, we love Fred, soiree 2009