Nielsen Massey and Peru at the 2016 Fancy Food Show

We were feted with many delicious treats at the Fancy Food Show. There were even cooking demos. Neilson-Massey offered us a yummy DLT (Duck Lettuce Tomato) with a fresh Hibiscus cooler on the side. You could pick up the recipe to recreate it at home (of course we did–you know we love duck). They have numerous awards in food excellence and are best known for their vanilla extract (but they sell many other extracts as well).

Duck BLT and Hibiscus Cooler

The Nielson-Massey team, ready to answer all your lingering extract questions.

After sampling Nielson-Massey's delightful duck dish we wandered around the International Pavilion for a while before stumbling upon a food presentation produced by the country of Peru. What? Peru? Yes, and everything was delectable. Thank goodness Tea Time is already well versed in sharing dishes, because even though all these plates were sample sized we were feeling pretty full. It's a good thing there's always a lot of walking when we are at the FFS.

Tea Time is waiting with bated breath and empty tummies to see what trends pop up at the 2017 winter fancy food show. This yearly event gives us insight into food trends and tastes we might not find if we didn't attend the show. Check out our Instagram for live updates of the great finds and delicious treats that come to our attention this January.

Blackberry Pie Murder House Party

Welcome to our House Party! Honorary Tea Time Adventurer Stephanie was picked to be a Hostess with the Mostess and promote a new Joanne Fluke Mystery novel. The title is Blackberry Pie Murder and so, of course, we got to make lots of pies, cocktails and mocktails, talk about books and play some Simpsons Clue.

If you read culinary mysteries, you've heard of Joanne Fluke. She has written 18 books in the Hannah Swensen series, and Blackberry Pie Murder is her latest recipe packed who-dun-it. Stephanie and Angela got inspired by the party pack loot that House Party sent us! In fact, Angela decided this would be the perfect opportunity for her business Tipsy Tea to create a Gift Bag for the event.

Without further ado, we give you the Blackberry Pie Murder Party in pictures. Presented by House Party, Tipsy Tea and Hostess Stephanie!

The Joanne Fluke box is here! House Party has sent a gang of goodies to inspire us.

 Tipsy Tea was inspired to create a gift bag for the event! It included Blackberry Surprise Tea and Joanne's Rimming Sugar for cocktails and mocktails along with recipe cards, a tea cup and tea ball in addition to a personal sized homemade Blackberry Pie to go.

Recipes created by Joanne Fluke and a Blackberry Pie booklet.

Tea cups are great for cocktails! Tipsy Tea Blackberry Surprise Tea and Joanne's Rimming Sugar.

Game, stir stick/glow stick (house party) Soap, Navitas Naturals Cocoa Balm (Tipsy Tea)

 You saw that Joanne prepared us with some great recipes in the House Party pack, but we also ransacked some of her other books to round out our potluck.
Here is The Food:

Pate and "Christmas Cheese Round"  before

After (with bread and crackers)

The pate inspired several proposals of marriage due to its deliciousness.

J. K. made Blackberry Surprise Cookies and Heavenly Teacakes. We also noshed on Pepperidge Farm raspberry cookies from the House Party goodie box.

Personal sized Blackberry Pies for all the guests to take home (before baking).

Blackberry Pie Martini and unbaked pie

Tito's Vodka infused with blackberries

The spread

Beautifully baked Blackberry Pie

Individual crumble topped Blackberry Pies. Recipe from Blackberry Pie Murder by Joanne Fluke.

Lastly we made Popovers! Angela and J. K. have been talking about them for a while now and this was the perfect time to do it ourselves, using a Joanne Fluke recipe. They got a bit brown, but still tasted great.

Book lover with popover recipe

Popover Popped Open

Popovers In Muffin Pan

Everyone had a bunch of fun at the house party event, drinking cocktails and mocktails, talking about the book, and playing Simpsons Clue. Here's the candid shots (plus some portraits!).

who will win???!

If you'd like to get a bit of the action, we have two Joanne Fluke Blackberry Pie Murder Party Gift Bags (created by Tipsy Tea). Just post to us in the comments if you have read Joanne Fluke and tell us about your favorite recipe from her Hannah Swensen series. Two commenters will be picked at random to win! You'll be just as excited as the guest who attended the party in our triptych below.

House Party has a wide variety of events available and if you'd like to host one, just sign up(and invite your friends)! Tea Time applied to host Joanne Fluke too, but we were happy Stephanie won the honor. Joanne Fluke writes other novels as well, so if culinary mysteries aren't your thing, maybe another of her books will thrill you. Happy Spring parties with a side of books!

Dahlia Bakery- Cook the book for November

November is here! Wait, it's gone.

The holiday season can sometimes seem to fly by since everyone is trying to pack in parties, baking, vacation with family, not to mention shopping for presents (or making presents)! J.K. and Angela stepped outside the hustle bustle one day to enjoy our simple lunch inspired by our Cook the Book for November, The Dahlia Bakery Cookbook: Sweetness in Seattle.

Our goal was a warming and nutritious lunch to sustain us through an afternoon of Chocolate making. We were ready to try out our new silicone molds. The only soup in the Bakery book, Tomato Soup, uses ingredients you can find in the pantry! So it was an obvious choice to add grilled cheese sandwiches to the menu as well. Angela had to buy some canned tomatoes (she's so spoiled by California produce, she usually uses fresh or none), but everything else was at hand. In fact, Angela was a bit skeptical of the recipe, it seemed so simple. However, it was delicious! Next time Angela is visiting a relative and we don't know what to do for dinner...Dahlia Tomato Soup!

 We skipped the croutons since we were having grilled cheese. J.K. made a sourdough rye in her bread machine, using yeast and Ready Sourdough from Seitenbacher. At first the dough looked much too wet, but the finished loaf, while not very tall, was very tasty. We ended up making one sandwich and splitting it. We were good and resisted the bacon (and avocado) suggested as a variation recipe, although J.K. did ask, "Did you bring some?" when Angela asked about the recipe. This sandwich recipe calls for shredded cheese, and due to that, the cheese did fall out a bit on the way to the pan, so maybe we'd form it into a loose patty instead of just piling it on the bread and tomato on next time? Lunch was rounded out with a nice salad dressed with Balasmic vinegar (presented in a vintage bowl).

Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese (with Tomato) Sandwiches

Seitenbacher products make tasty bread (for the grilled cheese sandwiches)

While we didn't get a lot of pictures from lunch, JK was ahead of the game and ready to show off her lovely new baking pan featuring the Chocolate Banana Bread recipe from the Dahlia Cookbook. They're a perfect match to make a lovely and delicious hostess gift. She also gives a picture tutorial on making custard, just add ice cream maker.

Creme Anglaise

Strained over the chopped chocolatae

Melted Magic, ready to go in the ice cream maker.

Created perfect frozen custard.

J.K.'s prepared new loaf pan

The pan was just the right size for the recipe

The strip around the pan kept the top of the loaf even.

And the banana bread unmolded perfectly.

Dessert was much later, featuring the chocolate chunk banana bread (Very good) from the cookbook, served with Chocolate Frozen Custard (Belgian style). That Ice Cream maker is getting a work out this fall. Thanks to Cook the Book from August for making J.K. get it out of the mothballs!

Chocolate Banana Bread with Chocolate Frozen Custard

Meg from Grow and Resist and Briggs from OhBriggsy have inspired a lot of good cooking this year and introduced us to some new cookbook authors. It makes us feel like next year we need to cook our own books, the ones we buy that inspire us but then sit on the shelf for a while waiting to be cracked open, spilled on and loved. One more cookbook is on hold for Tea Time at the Library... check in next month (or maybe look under the tree) for the fruits of our labors.

Happy Holidays from Tea Time!!

What's cooking in Jerusalem? September luncheon

Cook the Book September (yup! it's nearly the holidaze!) was Jerusalem, co-authored by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. Angela must have been living under a rock, because this was a cookbook she's never heard about before cook the book. Turns out the hype is for real. Check out this cook book if you want salads with few ingredients but big taste. Plus the amazing full-page pictures are a treat as well. If you're intrigued about what we ate for lunch, read on!

J.K., as usual, made dessert, a semolina, coconut and marmalade cake. This is very different from her usual cakes. No chocolate, to begin with, and not too sweet. No frosting, either. This is more a quickbread than a cake.

A lot of ingredients, though

First, combine the wet ingredients.

Oil, juice, zest, eggs and marmalade.

Mix until the marmalade dissolves. If you don't have a silicone paddle, use a whisk for this step.

Whisk the dry ingredients together.

Don't forget to prepare your pans. J.K. uses cake strips to keep the edges from baking before the middle, so she doesn't get a cracked dome in the middle of her cakes.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and pour evenly into the prepared pans. The recipe said to use two one-pound loaf pans, so she did, but one would have been enough.

The cakes didn't rise enough for two pans, but they were delicious and had a nice texture nonetheless.

After baking, the cakes get brushed with as much orange syrup as they can hold.

J.K.'s cake rounded out our veggie meal nicely! Angela made three salads from the cookbook (although there were a lot more recipes that inspired her, she used the tried and true cook the book method of sticking with the recipes that grabbed her attention during the first scan of the cookbook.) They were Baby Spinach Salad with Dates and Almonds, Burnt Eggplant salad and Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Fresh Figs.  We loved them all, and they were great to mix and match. They were supplemented by olives, hummus and pita and lots of pomegranate seeds. For our drinks we had a lovely light Sparkling white, provided by an absent friend which Angela gussied up with Brandied Cherries (also made by said friend, thanks G!)

Cook the Book Jerusalem Luncheon–the mystery jar contains soft cheese!

You can make this–simple, beautiful, delicious–here.

This recipe revamped the spinach salad for Angela.

Choose small eggplants to shorten the cooking time for this dish

Angela chose to serve up J.K.'s cake with the suggested orange blossom water flavored Greek yogurt (tip: make sure your "Greek" yogurt is not thickened with cornstarch–or something more ominous!!) roasted figs and more more more pomegranate seeds. It was a light and flavorful ending to the meal.

cake, yes please!

Have you found any favorite cookbooks through friends? Or do you page through them at the bookstore/library? Maybe you just search the internet (Angela found lots of recipes from Jerusalem online, but few blog posts/articles had the amazing photos and historical background provided in the cookbook–unless they were quoting it directly of course.)  J.K. has so many cookbooks (mostly dessert) that she needs to start a cook the book a week club just to make a dent!