Red Cedar

Post #3062: Dinner for 20 x 2

Posted on April 18, 2017 by Megan

This past weekend, Brian and I hosted another fairly epic 3-day party which involved two full dinners (tapas-style on Saturday, sit-down on Sunday) for 18-24 people. The photos above are of both of those menu spreads and I decided to share here my menus for both dinners and some thoughts about planning for large gatherings.

First, the thoughts: Brian and I have been hosting parties together for almost ten years now, and before that we were both hosts as single people and in other relationships – as broke young adults, and now as comfortable middle-aged people. Bottom-line, we have a lot of experience. Hosting twenty-plus people for a whole weekend is not for amateurs – nor is it for single people who have friends who don’t pitch in and lend a hand.

I have both a partner and friends who are willing to make the party – which is what makes this type of gathering a possibility. Do not believe those Pinterest boards that try to convince you that dinner for twenty is easy if you just do one step a day for five days – it’s a lot of work no matter what menu you plan, and you need some kind of helpers if you are going to get through it without being grumpy.

But! I have a few ideas about things that work:

Everyone wants to bring something. You can tell them no, but they will bring something anyway – so direct that energy. Otherwise you have ten loaves of bread or a flotilla of plastic tupperware bearing hummus. This doesn’t mean you have to potluck it, but there are so many small things one might need – like toothpicks, or napkins, a pound of coffee for breakfast (if you are overnighting it), etc. Also, wine.
Further to this, if people offer to make food and a bit of potluck is tolerable (I don’t do potluck for sit-down dinners, but that’s me), it’s okay to provide them with a recipe to use or improvise on so you can ensure that things go together on the table.
If you are planning a party that goes all weekend and requires many people to be fed, plan the first dinner so as to result in leftovers for next day’s lunch. We did a tapas dinner on our first night of the weekend and made double the amount of chicken wings. There was tons of salads and cheese leftover as well. That plus some fresh bread – it’s really all people want or need in between two large dinners (and drinks).
One moderately fancy thing means that everything else on the table is elevated. In the case of Sunday’s sit-down dinner, that was an asparagus/ricotta/phyllo tart. Homemade flatbreads did the trick for Saturday’s tapas. Not everything has to be fancy.
On the sit-down dinner front – plan a mix of foods served warm and at room temperature. The main course should be hot, but everything else can be a mix. The Easter dinner menu below proved to be an excellent combination in terms of getting things out of the kitchen and onto the table at appropriate temperatures.
It goes without saying – but do what you can in advance. I had bread dough on the rise from earlier in the week, salad dressing in the fridge by Wednesday, and a whole day of advance prep on Friday. The more organized you are the better you will feel.
Do accommodate food intolerance and allergies from the ground up. Do not plan whatever meal you intended and then make a single side dish that your xxx-intolerant person can eat – it’s rude and cross contamination can happen in a kitchen if you aren’t careful. If you are hosting, you are hosting, and that means not making people sick. In the case of this dinner party I had to plan for tomato, garlic/onion free meals, and vegetarian guests. (All garlic & onions in the recipes below was omitted except in the meatballs)
More people in the kitchen during the meal prep is not helpful. Best combination is one reliable worker on kitchen tasks (my friend Jon performed this role) and one free ranger who is making sure that things outside the kitchen stay organized and tidy (that was Brian on Sunday). Otherwise, everyone else should stay out of the way.
Where your friends can really shine is after the meal! Immediate clean-up afterwards makes everything feel organized, and helps to create a feeling of being attended to. Lucky me, I didn’t even have to organize this on the weekend – Brian and friends just swooped right in and did it while I have was having deep post-dinner conversations. Blessed!

Menu #1: Buffet style, Tapas for 24
All recipes below were doubled or tripled, except the meatballs. Meats and hot dishes were made by me, the veggie sides were brought by guests.

Garlic herb flatbread
White kidney bean hummus flavoured with olive oil, lemon juice, cumin, and corriander. Food process to desired flavours and consistency.
Lamb meatballs with mint
Grilled Basque chicken wings
Tortilla Espanola (this did not work well without onions, I wouldn’t do it again)
Marinated manchego cheese
Sherried mushrooms
Carrots and lentils in olive oil
Carrot salad with oregano and cumin
Cheeses and olives from the deli
Nectarine and anise tarts (preserves thickened with cornstarch and cooked into filling, miniature tart shells, bake in the oven at 375 for 18 minutes)

Leftovers note: I have the lentils and carrot salad leftover in my fridge at the moment, and intend to heat those in some chicken stock and then blend to make soup with for the week.

Menu #2: Site-down, Easter dinner for 18
All food made by myself, with help on the roasting of meats by Brian. I made two dishes of everything and set two tables separately.

White and whole wheat breads made from the No-knead bread recipe and the Healthy Artisan Breads in 5-minutes a day book respectively.
Herbed butter (yes, you can make your own butter easily with a stand mixer)
Herbed ricotta, asparagus, phyllo tart x 2
Sage and Butternut Squash risotto x 1.5 | This is an Instantpot recipe. In general, I do not recommend risotto for a large dinner party unless you have a pressure cooker. It takes too much attention otherwise.
Spinach, walnut, apple salad with blue cheese dressing
1 large ham from the pigs raised at Singing Lands Ranch, warmed in the oven
Beer can chicken x 2 – cooked on the bbq
Dessert was provided by Jill who brought us meringue nests with lemon curd topped with berries (I wish I had a photo of that!)

Leftovers note: The chicken carcasses were turned into stock in the Instantpost immediately following dinner. The remaining spinach, toasted walnuts, and blue cheese dressing were turned into an incredible pasta dinner last night with the addition of some rotini and bacon (we picked the few apples in the salad out before we turned it into pasta sauce).

This is the third weekend-long party we have thrown since moving here eleven months ago – and definitely a successful one in that there was much good conversation and laughter, and also that I have very few leftovers in my fridge.

And now I return to my semi-monastic life of work, gardening, and meditation as Brian returned to the city today and I’m on my own until Friday. So quiet. So filled up from a weekend of love and attention.

Post # 3061: Carrot muffins

Posted on April 8, 2017 by Megan

1 Comment

For whatever reason, possibly due to the rain, I’ve been baking a lot this winter. Mostly bread (more on that in another post), but because I love a good muffin every once and awhile, I’ve also been on the hunt for healthy-ish muffin recipes. This one ticks off all my boxes because it’s low in sugar, and has a decent amount of fibre. Sourced from allrecipes.com (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/23787/awesome-carrot-muffins/) – the only thing I’ve modified here is the sugar amount. Most carrot muffin recipes are way skimpy on the carrot – but not this one!

1 cup raisins
2 cups warm water
2 cups all-purpose, unbleached flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 cups shredded carrots

Combine raisins and water in a small bowl. Let soak for 15 minutes. Drain raisins, discard water and set raisins aside.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease muffin cups or line with paper muffin liners.
In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. In a separate bowl, combine eggs, oil and brown sugar; beat well. Combine egg mixture and flour mixture; mix just until moistened. Fold in carrots and drained raisins. Spoon into prepared muffin cups.
Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 30 minutes. Let cool for 30 minutes before frosting.

Post #3060: Every day sitting

Posted on April 5, 2017 by Megan

1 Comment

Brian cleaned up the shrubs in front of the zendo yesterday and now I have to decide what to plant – I had been thinking of a Katsura tree, but a friend online told me that they aren’t drought tolerant and now I have to decide whether to risk it or not. Our spot on the island is a wet one, but in high summer it can get pretty dried out.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, my sitting practice has gotten more regular again, for the first time since last June when we moved. While I have sat lots since moving (3-5 times per week plus retreats) – it has not been a daily practice. In the last 33 days (yes, I keep track), I have managed to re-establish daily practice even with travel to the cities and a hectic schedule – which just goes to show that daily practice isn’t about how busy I am, but how dedicated I am to doing it.

If you don’t meditate, you might wonder – is there really a difference between sitting five times per week and every day? While to a seasoned practitioner of meditation (twenty years or more), perhaps there is no difference – in my nascent state (of only three years), I deeply feel the difference.

And I suppose that makes sense – zen isn’t something that we just practice when we feel like it, it’s something we try to embody in all our dealings every day – and as the core of the practice is zazen (sitting meditation) – it makes sense that sitting every day helps us to work with zen principles in every day life too. That means accepting and letting go of anxieties, being with impermanence and change rather than resisting, cultivating equanimity – and so on.

In one of Brad Warner’s books on zen he tells the reader at the outset “if you don’t have a daily practice, don’t bother reading any more of this book as it’s a waste of your time” – that’s my paraphrase because I can’t find the quote right now – but it pretty much sums up the feeling that you can’t really do zen without practice.

Another way of saying that is we can’t intellectualize our way to enlightenment.

For me, this is not dogmatic or about what I “should” do – but based in the fact that every day that I sit, my grounding points are strenghtened for that day. Morning practice in particular helps me step into a the day with awareness about my starting block. Am I more tired than normal? Grumpy? Giddy? Anticipating a heavy work day?

When I come to myself in silence for even a brief period – it brings the day into focus, my reactivity, what I am bringing to my work and my life off the cushion.

Which is not to say that I have some kind of horrible time when I don’t meditate for a day, but I’m just not as well integrated on the inside, and it’s noticeable. If several days in a row go by without practice, that’s when I notice a lot more difficulty – my old anxiety flares right back up, and I am quicker to anger and criticsm.

There are many reasons that I told myself my daily practice dropped off, but mainly it’s because I allowed it to happen in the flurry of uprooting and resettling. I take this return of solid zazen as a sign that I have actually landed back in my life and am settling on Gabriola for real. And now that I have regrouped in one place again, I see how free I am to leave it and take my daily exercise of silence with me, wherever I go – even if it means practicing on a crowded city bus on the way to work (as I had to early last week).

We are ten months here and I am just finding my seat again – and what a lovely little zendo to explore this in!

Post #3059: Introducing the tiny zendo

Posted on April 4, 2017 by Megan

Leave a Comment

I was away from home for two weeks doing all the things (friends, jukai, work, training) in both nearby cities (Victoria then Vancouver). It was a wonderful break after being alone for much of the time this winter (not lonely though) – and I think in the two weeks of travel I saw pretty much all of my closest friends and was more than grateful for the many nice meals and visits (and all of that time spent with Brian as we travelled and stayed together in Van). Though I returned home last Wednesday, it’s taken me a few days to come back to ground and reintegrate into my home life. Being “on the road” and at the city condo is fun and all – but for a homebody like me, it’s also a little unsettling. I am a person who creates a bit of a fortress wherever I live – from the days when I only rented a room in a house, up until now with our half acre and home – I tend to surround myself with the things of my life and then spend a lot of time in that space. It’s not the comfort of material things that I seek in doing that, but a sense of personal space and the arrangement of it that’s most important.

One of the things that happened while we were away, was some work on the outdoors of our property – including work on a little outbuilding that was here when we moved in. This 9×9 “shed” was dank and full of detritus when we moved into the house – it smelled so foul (from some rotting carpet in the loft) that the dog wouldn’t even go into it. But even so, we quickly realized that it was way too overbuilt to be a simple shed – with power (four outlets, two overhead lights), insulation, two windows, and a poured concrete foundation – it had all the makings of a usable studio building or guest cabin. Last summer Brian and I cleaned it out and he threw a coat of white paint over everything to freshen it up in time for friends to stay in it during our summer party – but otherwise it needed some finishing work.

Because we already have studio space (and lots of it for both of us), we decided that this would be our tiny zendo, or meditation hall – and also double as guest space when needed. While away in March, we hired someone to come in and put up some shiplap to finish the walls and the loft, and on our return this past weekend we whitewashed those walls and bought flooring and a new light fixture. Yesterday, Brian installed the fixture and finished putting in the flooring and I nailed in the finishing strips along the edges (minus one, I ran out of material) – and voila! It’s a tiny zendo!

There are a last few additions still to come, including a shelf, and a wall heater, and some loft finishing including a piece of carpet and a ladder that hooks on for stability. Plus, I plan to landscape the outside a bit more and bang together a rack for shoes by the front door – but I’ve got a sitting space that feels light and airy, and a pleasure to be in. It’s *such* a great space that even Brian might be tempted to meditate there with me – he’s feeling mighty happy with how it turned out also.

I haven’t had a chance to sit in it yet, though I plan to do so tonight after returning home from work. I have returned to a rock solid daily practice for the first time since moving, and am reminded of the unmatchable benefits of sitting every day. So if you come visit me, and would like a sit while you are over – I will always affirm that desire – for sitting together strengthens all of our intentions. More cushions will soon be on order to accommodate guests.