Zakushka Party Decorating

Dr. Debbie came over during the day today to assist Wife with the decorating and organization of de-I Tower for the grand event. Things are looking smashing.

Here they have laid out all the serving dishes. Pictures that we have of Zakushka tables show them using lots of glass and silver. Most of our silver serving ware hasn't been used in years so Wife was hard at work getting them cleaned.
You will note if you look carefully that they have little slips of paper in them. Those show which foods will go in which dishes.

You might remember this room from our Xmas festivities as the Pink Suite. Now it has been converted in the Red Parlor (good for all those former Communist functionaries that might be attending the party)

Must have traditional Russian style eggs right?

Tomorrow I will take off from work for the major part of the cooking. Will try to take pictures.

Preview of Zakushka Food

Time has been scarce since in addition to getting ready for this party, I've been getting my business sales back up after the interruption with Dad. (He is stable by the way. Not going to get better but seems at peace and doing more of his normal stuff. I go back on Sunday for a few days right after the party). But since there was this clamor for food pictures, here is some that I've been able to secure.

First the "How To" of making a (close to) real French Pate (there are suppose to be two accents in that word but I don't know how to do them in Blogger).

You see below on the right a meat mixture, in this case about 1.5 pounds of pork shoulder meat, 1.5 pounds of chicken dark meat, .75 pounds of pork fatback, and .25 pounds of chicken livers ground coarse. I have my butcher do this. I give them the order and pick it up. Easy.

Then the meat mixture is flavored and allowed to rest for at least one day and up to three days for the flavors to meld.

The rest that is needed is the pay and the bacon.

Put some thyme and a couple of bay leaves in the pan

Line the pan with bacon

Put meat mixture in pan

Cover and enclose with more bacon and put more thyme and bay leaf on the top.

Seal with two sheets of aluminum foil put into a pan and put in hot water up to about a half an inch up the sides and cook for two hours at 325 degrees.

When it is done you put some cardboard on the top and weigh it down to compress it. I can't show you the finished product until the party. Sorry

Can You Guess What This Is?

Right you are, cabbage and beets marinating in vinegar and water...for six days at room temperature. This is my most daring recipe. I tried some today and am still alive to write about it so all is going well!

Next Quiz Question - What's This?

Right again. Gravlax curing in its salt, sugar, cognac rub. Here it is without the weights on.
I actually tried some of this today and its going to be great.

The oil cured eggplant doing its curing.

Marinated mushrooms marinating.

Tomorrow is a busy work day but I will have to start the Trout in Orange Marinade. Friday I'm taking off from work just to cook but it may be until Sunday before I have time to get things posted.

Zakushka Dinner Menu

This upcoming Epic Cooking Event is so big I having trouble even finding the time to take pictures let alone put together edited cooking posts. I think we're going to have around 25 people and there will be a combination cold and hot buffet accompanied by home made flavored vodkas (Dr. Deb and Cabinet Lady are doing those) - it is a Russian themed party after all. Here is what we're making. I'll do my best to get some pictures as we go along.

Cold Buffet:

• Gravlax - home made
  
• Pate de Campagne - home made
  
• Traditional Russian Liver Pate - home made
  
• Trout in Orange Marinade - home made
• Selection of Cured Sausages and Hams - purchased
• Selection of Imported Cheeses - purchased
• Pickled Cabbage Salad - home made
• Oil Cured Eggplant - home made
• Pickled Carrots - home made
• Pickled Mushrooms - home made
• Tuna in Roasted Pepper Rolls - home made
• Estonian Ham & Potato Salad in Herring Sour Cream Sauce - home made
  

Hot Buffet:

• Tomato Basil Tart - home made
• Wild Mushroom Ragout - home made
• Meatballs in Sausage Sauce - home made
• Chicken Wings in Saffron Sauce - home made
• Kasha (a traditional Russian buckwheat grain) - home made

Breads:

• Country White - home made
• Central Asian Onion Flat Bread - home made
• French Baguettes - purchased
• Russian Style Black Bread - purchased

Dessert:

• Charlotte Russe - a home made confection that has a base and sides of lady fingers and is filled with a custard, chilled and turned over and decorated with whipped cream. (another contribution of Cabinet Lady and Dr. Deb)

This last weekend I started the salmon curing, made the Pate de Campagne (hope to get some pictures up tomorrow), started the cabbage curing, pickled the mushrooms, and started the eggplant curing. I need to do the trout tomorrow or Thursday. Friday I will do all the hot meat dishes and the liver pate. Saturday I help Wife with the tart, Estonian salad, breads, etc.

This is going to be so good :)

Solitude

I like being alone. I like time to myself without others around. And I am basically an early person. I love the early morning when the world is very quiet. My typical schedule is getting up at 5:30 AM, meditating for 40 minutes, then showering and heading off so I can make a 7:30 or 8:00 AM breakfast meeting.

My exercise of choice is walking (hiking is the once a week big event). I will do a 45 minute loop that takes me to the valley at the foot of the mountain out of the neighborhoods and into the open space of the national forest. To get this in with my regular schedule means getting up an hour earlier, 4:30 AM. I will do that a couple of times a week.

During the summer when it is light early and it gets hot, lots of folks are out during the 5:30 to 6:00 AM time slot. But not during the winter. Exercising in the winter is an ideal time for obtaining solitude. It's cold (for here). It's dark. And it's quiet. If you do see anyone, they're just shadows anyway.

This morning when I went out, it was particularly wonderful. The moon was full. The mountains were bathed in that soft moon light. And we had gotten a dusting of snow over night. Just enough that the bushes and trees were soft and rounded. And the mountains glowed even more in the moonlight.

And there was no one. Not a soul that I saw during the whole walk. Just the beauty, the quiet, the peace and me.

Something Pleasant To Write About

Things have somewhat settled down with my Father. I doesn't look like this is the crisis that ends it. We've put together a care team that seems to have Father feeling secure. He's gotten stronger (though clearly not going to fully recover). So my brother and I are going to try and pull back the amount we're going to Connecticut as it could be months now.

So I'm going to be home for almost 10 days, a real welcome spell to focus on my business and try to get some revenues in. And as an extra added bonus, we're not going to have to cancel our second Cooking Event of Epic Proportions. You may remember the first event in August where we collaborated with our friends Cabinet Lady and Dr. Debbie for a grand international chile oriented event. We were so happy with the outcome that we almost immediately decided we needed to do another one, in the winter.

So for the winter event, I decided to go back to my Russian heritage and the tradition of the zakushka table. This was a buffet that was always kept stocked because in the vast spaces of Russia guests didn't 'call' they dropped in. And you had to have food and drink ready at all times in that account.

Stay tuned for the details.

A Little Rest But Not Much Recreation

I came home from Connecticut last Tuesday after 9 days of dealing with the Father issues. The immediate crisis has passed but the question of just how long he will last and whether the system of support we've set up in Connecticut will suffice. One of the problems is that it is virtually impossible for us to organize a system whereby one of the brothers (who all live out of state) can be with Dad all the time. We've floated an idea of getting him to one of our houses - an expensive proposition but but potentially much better for giving him loving attention.

On the home front as fate would have it, Wife had a trip to visit one of the girls scheduled for Wednesday through Sunday evening. As I am on my way back to Connecticut (this being Sunday), that meant I got a whole 26 hours with her before she left. I should be home next Thursday barring any new crises.

Rough Day

On Friday we were able to get my Dad home from the hospital. But it was a tough day all around. Any of you who have dealt with the medical system understand how difficult it can be to get all the pieces to work together so you can actually get out. In our case we had to have the 24 hour in home health aide hired and in place. That in turn required a doctor's certification to provide legal cover to the home healthcare company. And we needed to pass him on to hospice care - a separate organization. That required a doctor to take him under his care. However is primary care physician wasn't authorized to work at the hospital he was at plus he had been out of the office for a number of days.

Late in the morning, the pieces all finally came together and then (as I've seen a number of times before) the system seems to click into place and go into high gear because they ambulanced him home exactly when they said with the hospice evaluation taking place very shortly after he arrived.

But that's not what made it tough. What made it tough was earlier in the morning my Father asking me to stay longer. I was scheduled to come home Saturday with my other brother from Hawaii arriving Saturday morning. My Dad didn't feel that was enough time to do all we needed to to handle the contingencies going forward. But what made it tough was my emotional reaction because my Father has never made a request of me in his life. Even in a number of other highly stressful situations in recent years like Mother's death and the fire at his house, he never asked for help. In fact it was more like you had to shove assistance down his throat. So the mere act of asking was this pronouncement of his end in my eyes. And I was pretty much an emotional wreck for the rest of the day.