Friday, March 4, 2011

A Leaf, A Loin and A Strategically Placed Strawberry

Menu
Pork Tenderloin
Blueberry Spinach Salad with Poppyseed Dressing
Succotash
Butter Muffins
Devil's Food Cake with Fresh Strawberries, Demerara Sugar & Whipped Cream


Setting
Our house (cleaned!)
Vintage tablecloth
Dh's grandmother's dishes
My grandmother's silverplate
Napkins we received as a wedding present (vintage, yet?)
Napkin rings from dd's trip to Honduras
Glassware from our family trip to Austria


















For the pork tenderloin, I used my favorite marinade. It was a 2.3 pound tenderloin and I cooked in on low in my slow cooker for about 3 hours.

The Blueberry Spinach salad is really easy, but quite tasty.
1 bag baby spinach
1 cup fresh blueberries, rinsed and drained well
1/3 cup slivered almonds

Toss all ingredients together.
I served it with (gasp) a bottled poppyseed dressing from Publix.

The Succotash is my variation. I've never written it down before, but to the best of my remembrance it is:
12 ounces frozen tiny limas
1 can white shoe peg corn
2 Tablespoons butter
garlic salt and pepper to taste

Bring the limas to a boil in a generous sized pot seasoned with a little salt. Reduce heat to medium and cover with a tilted lid (to keep boil overs to a minimum!). Cook until tender, about 20 minutes. Drain the water from the limas and stir in remaining ingredients. Place the pot over low heat and bring everything up to serving temperature. Adjust seasonings and serve in a covered container to retain heat.

Butter Muffins are a family favorite! I like this one because the batter can be made up in advance and stored in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks
3/4 cup butter, melted
1/4 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 pkg. dry yeast
2 cups warm water
4 cups self-rising flour

Cool butter and add all ingredients. Stir well. Batter will be sticky. Store in refrigerator up to 2 weeks in a covered container. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Greased a muffin tin and fill each cup 2/3rds full (I use an ice cream scoop). Bake for 15-20 minutes. Serve piping hot with lots of butter!
Makes 2 dozen.

Devil's Food Cake with Fresh Strawberries, Demerara Sugar & Whipped Cream is really a cheat. There's no actual recipe. I just saw something like this once and replicated it the easiest way I knew.
1 Duncan Hines Devil's food cake mix
1 pint fresh strawberries
Demerara sugar
Redi-Whip Whipped Cream (the original)

Mix and bake the cake according to the package directions. I have a 10 inch flan pan that I use for this. I bake half the batter in my flan pan and the remainder in a standard 8 inch cake pan. (The 8 inch cake is extra! You can freeze it or let the kids have it as an afternoon snack!) Once the cake is baked, cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Flip the cake out and let it completely cool on the wire rack. Once cool, transfer it to your serving platter. 
Wash and dry the strawberries. Slice strawberries lengthwise (I use my egg slicer for this) and lay slices on the flan. Sprinkle with a little demerara sugar.  Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. To serve, slice flan into 8 wedges and top with whipped cream.

And that's about it. I was really pleased with how this one came together. I am especially happy with table setting. Having the opportunity to use all my vintage pieces together was lots of fun and I think it gave my guests a picture of who I really am!

Happy Eating!

No comments:

Post a Comment