Chicken Curry Pie

Dear Theresa,

Baking in bulk is the way to go! You bake for a few hours and have meals to last you days. I usually make a big batch of chicken pie and freeze all but one of them. To eat a frozen pie, just pull it out of the freezer, put it in the oven for half an hour to an hour, or nuke it!

I asked the hub to make different flavored sauces so we wouldn't get bored of plain old chicken. I made the regular gravy myself and he made a few different seasonings: curry, paprika and gumbo file!

Here's the curry recipe. Yum!

Chicken Curry Pie
½ chopped large onion
3 cloves of garlic
2 T minced ginger
1 T madras curry powder
1 t paprika
1 t dry mustard
S&P
2 T sugar
½ C chopped cilantro
½ roasted chicken meat
2 potatoes, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1 celery, chopped
2 cups of gravy (made from pan drippings, butter, flour and stock)


Saute onion till soft, add garlic. Add remaining spices and seasonings except for the cilantro. Mix in 2 cups of the prepared gravy. Finish with chopped cilantro at the end. Mix the seasoned gravy with the chicken, potatoes, carrots and celery and pour in the pie shell. Cover with more pie crust and bake in a 425-degree oven for 30 minutes. Turn the oven down to 350 and bake an hour more.

Viburnum and Tulips

Dear Theresa,

With Valentine's Day coming up, I was feeling particularly romantic when it comes to flowers. None of that cheesy red roses and heart-shaped balloons, please.
Here's an arrangement of bright green viburnum, pink tulips and locally grown ranunculus, and unripe blackberries. I couldn't decide if the colors look better in bright light or muted. Flowers in morning light look so vibrant but I like the moody quality of the filtered light... reminds me of a Dutch oil painting. Which do you prefer?

Flower Arrangements at LA Art Show

Dear Theresa,

I usually look forward to the LA Art Show's flower arrangements. They're lush and always interesting. This year I was a little disappointed about the obviously ikebana-influenced style.
I love ikebana, but these arrangements feel like too much of a hybrid for my tastes... not spare enough to be ikebana and not lush enough be Western-styled.
Nonetheless, they're still very pretty, especially when laid out en masse.
The moving lighting, reminiscent of water reflecting off a pond, added to the aesthetic. This trough behind the reception area was my favorite.
I also found the decorations in the lobby interesting. These pillar arrangements are in simple plastic florist buckets! It still works. Great idea.

LA Art Show 2009 Sculptures

Dear Theresa,
Every year we look forward to going to the LA Art Show. Galleries from around the country exhibit, including personal favorites like Nedra Matteucci in Sante Fe and Nancy Hoffman in New York. It's like going to a museum in which every piece of art is for sale.

Unfortunately, photography wasn't allowed in the show itself, so I can't show you some affordable Korean paintings from the Chung Jark Gallery or some unaffordable wood sculpture from the del Mano Gallery. But, the lobby wasn't off limits, and I snapped some shots of sculpture on display.

I love this felt sculpture (forgot to take down the artist's name) and this whimsical ceramic from Rebekah Bogard. But the most arresting for me personally was "Urban Fruit Tree" by Jean Wells. It pretty much speaks for itself!

Crab Quiche Recipe

Dear Theresa,

The recipes I throw up on this blog assume that you have a solid foundation of cooking knowledge. I don't break things down and spell out every instruction. If you can't whip up a mayonnaise or roast a chicken on demand, you might check out a basic cooking book like James Beard's Theory and Practice of Good Cooking.

Much more than just a cookbook, it explains how to cook and gives you the ability to cook from any recipe, or even better, without a recipe. I've been reading and learning all sorts of little things I didn't know before. For example, to ensure a non-soggy quiche crust, brush the crust with egg yolk when it's almost finished blind baking.

This recipe is straight from the book, except I substituted canned crab for clams. Inexpensive canned crab doesn't have the best texture (makes the quiche look a bit iffy), but it tastes yum.

Crab Quiche
Blind-baked dough (preferably a pate brisee, but store-bought pie dough will work) in a 9-inch tart pan
5 slices bacon
2 Tablespoons minced onion
6-ounce can of crab (reserve 1/2 C of the juice)
1 C heavy cream
4 eggs
S & P
Dash of Nutmeg
Dash of Tabasco

Cook the bacon till crisp and crumble into the partially baked shell. Cook the onions till soft in the fat and add to the shell along with the crab meat. Mix the crab juice, cream, eggs and seasonings together and pour over the mixture. Cook in a 350-degree oven for about 30 minutes till the filling is set.

Choosing Fonts

Dear Theresa,

I'm very torn right now deciding upon new fonts for my new business cards and website. I want to go with a cleaner look, so the site and the card will be all white. But which fonts to choose?

My favorite in this picture is Volt, which is used for all the contact info on each mock-up card. But what about using calligraphy-style fonts for the name of the business? Most wedding vendors and wedding invitations seem to have calligraphy somewhere. The other fonts pictured are Lanai Day, Miss Brooks (which costs $5) and Jane Austen (about $30). Do you have a preference?

All the fonts can be found from www.dafont.com and each card is embossed with my bee and lavender logo.

Garden Thriftiness Tips

Dear Theresa,

Most gardeners are naturally thrifty. We save seeds, take cuttings from other people's gardens rather than buying new plants, and we reuse a lot.

For outside seed starting, I always save the plastic containers from six-packs and individual plants bought in the past. I just throw them in a milk crate and pull them out whenever it's time to start new plants for the season (here I'm starting herbs and flowers for late spring bloom). When reusing pots, if there were any problems such as damping off or other diseases, clean the pot thoroughly and soak in a bleach solution. I usually don't bother otherwise and haven't had problems.

I also save shards of broken terracotta pots. They come in handy for blocking drainage holes, edging beds, and in this case, replacing part of a larger broken pot! If you have space and storing isn't an eyesore, save what you can... you'll never know what can come in handy.

Tuna Melt Recipe

Dear Theresa,

Much to my dismay, I've deleted my SD Card before transferring some pics of flower arrangements and my monumental task of eco-friendly oven cleaning. So, here's a lame, but tasty, recipe for a tuna melt.

The hubby and I did a complete inventory of all our canned goods and discovered some old cans of tuna taking up space. About the only type of canned tuna he'll eat (other than tuna packed in oil Italian style) is albacore, and he'll only eat it in tuna melts.

Tuna Melt
Butter
Sourdough bread
Canned Tuna
Cheese
Mayonnaise (or ingredients for homemade mayo: eggs, oil, mustard, Salt & Pepper)
Capers, chopped
Red Onion, chopped
Salt & Pepper

1. Mix the tuna, mayo, red onion, capers and seasoning together in the ratio that tastes best to you and set aside. For three cans of tuna I recommend 1/2 C mayo, 1/2 red onion and 1/4 C capers.
   
2. The most important thing about a tuna melt is a nice toast on your bread. Melt some butter in a pan and toast your bread on one side lightly. Take it out of the pan, add more butter and toast the other side, laying slices of cheese evenly so each bite has cheese (grating cheese is more surefire, but it's more work). Medium heat should melt the cheese and toast the bread without burning it.
3. Put your toast on a plate, gob on your tuna mixture, and slice your sandwich in half to eat.
   

Handmade Cuteness

Dear Theresa,

I packed up all the Christmas stuff (still needs to go in the attic), and all that's left are all the cute things my brother and sister-in-law gave us as gifts.

The little pig she crocheted for my birthday while my brother sewed up the bunnies with the button eyes. I arrayed them in the branches I have on display in the bedroom.

They also made me this adorable little terrarium out of a mason jar. You can see the stratified rocks and soil, with a thin layer of moss (foraged from my grandfather's front yard) on top. A little village of clay houses is held in place from below with toothpicks! It's too cute!

Classic Whites

Dear Theresa,

I whipped this classic white centerpiece for a bridal show the other week. It is a bit overabundant with green-tinged roses, white and green dendrobium orchids and white hydrangeas for my taste. But at the same time, I enjoy how wild the very classic flowers can look. Strew more orchids and petals on each table, dress it up with high-end linens and table settings and you can have this plain color palette look very out of the ordinary.

Plum, Fuschia and Silver Wedding Flowers

Dear Theresa,

The last wedding featured plenty of purples, from plum to fuchsia (if fuchsia can be considered a purple!). I covered the cake with $75 worth of anemones and dusty miller and the entire cake table with moss and river stones. Each table had a centerpiece of a hollow piece of birch filled with tulips, anemones, winter evergreens and more dusty miller. Everything tied in beautifully with the outdoor vibe of the venue (Calamigos in Malibu).

These are just my pre-wedding snapshots. I'll post the professional pics on www.brookhowell.com soon.

Happy New Year

Dear Theresa,

I took a few weeks off during and after the holidays and have plenty of things to update you on. Firstly, here's the wedding cake I made for D&M's wedding. Since I only had to pipe the top layer, it was pretty easy to incorporate making the cake and doing the flower arrangements for the same wedding.

You'd have loved the flavors. The main layer was a moist chocolate cake soaked with Frangelico syrup and layered with chocolate hazelnut ganache and chocolate hazelnut buttercream. Some hazelnut brittle sprinkled through one of the frosting layers added some texture and bitter contrast.

The smaller tiers were a delicious (and even pricier than the hazelnut and chocolate layer) combination of passion fruit, lavender and macadamia nuts. It consisted of two layers of fluffy vanilla bean genoise, a center layer of lavender/macadamia nut dacquoise and passion fruit buttercream in between. I could have eaten it all day.

The fondant kept the cake fresh while I finished up the flowers and it actually tasted pretty good too (Pettinice brand). This time I didn't peel it all the way off!