Everyone is welcome. This savory dish will be the talk of your dinner party, the unforeseen star of the show, the recipe that everyone will ask for.
The bacon grease slipping the sides of the pears, the savory coating of the salt and pepper, the tangy cut of the vinegar and mustard is, well, chef’s kiss.
ENJOY!
Summer is coming to a close and I’m trying to not get too depressed amongst crazy life things (did anyone else get the blues or have the world fall out from under them after turning 30? Asking for a friend).
While navigating a new season have turned out to be way more reactionary and survival mode than I anticipated, there have been some super sweet moments along the way that has kept me sane.
While planning a last minute surprise party for a dear friend, I realized that I didn’t want the typical bottle containers for wine, and don’t even show me a plastic cooler. I wanted texture, Italian vibes, effortless summer….so cue some MacGyvering and that Can-Do attitude that keeps my life afloat most days.
The trick? I wanted to use some baskets that I have, but how do you make it work? The other trick? Keeping leftover materials from past shoots to come in clutch. Using clear plastic, I cut pieces large enough to fill the bottom of the basket and the sides. Cut the piece longer than you need, then add bottles and fill with ice, trim the extra and voila!
Now, go hurry and have some friends over for the last of summer Rosé :)
Cheers!
-Kat
It’s hot, it’s muggy, everything and everyone is sweating. So much so that I feel like I’ve sweat past lives out onto the sidewalk while trudging to my destination in hopes of some cool relief.
Since we’re already going to be throwing ice into any drink we can, why not make it pretty?!
Find some edible flowers (ask friends/neighbors/etc if you don’t have any!), also use an app to identify and make sure you have the right ones, some varieties have sub species that are so similar but one is edible and one is not!
Buy some silicone ice trays - W+P Design has some good ones, Amazon of course, just follow your heart.
Fill the trays halfway with water. Add the flowers, let freeze for at least two hours, then take out and fill with ice cold water to the top. This way the flowers stay in the middle for that dramatic effect you want and won’t float to the top!
Et voilá! Spice up your 7th glass of water, your 5 o’clock cocktail or your kid’s lemonade.
The sun is back, summer is coming, Kat is happy again.
Woof, I don’t know about y’all but winter hits me harder e v e r y year and I am sick of it. But the last two weeks have played games with our hearts here in Nashville and inspiration and creativity is returning, along with a full heart.
Easy summer appetizer? Beautiful handiwork that takes 10 minutes? Go play. Here ya go.
The time has come.
Bathtub Bon Appetit. What is one of my favorite and ultimate ways to relax and what appears to be everyone’s less than secret obsession, is here. It’s kind of extra, self-indulgent, and pretty incredible. I feel like I should have my friends who have no gone on to try it for themselves to write reviews to show that it lives up to its hype. I’ve been doing it so long I don’t really remember when it started, only that at the first time I did it was because there was no other thing I needed most than to eat a McDonald’s burger in the bath. Fairytale beginning, amiright.
Now it’s moved onto cooking complicated dishes (or doing a fun game of what can I make from the pantry), sipping on a cocktail that fits the food and r-e-l-a-x-i-n-g.
It’s a combination of all the self care. Amazing food, tasty cocktail, bath, oils, crystals, reading or watching. Music and cooking. A time to decompress and stop time. The cooking begins the art of the slow down, the bath running, music playing, beginning to let the day go.
Soak a minimum of 20-30 minutes. You’re welcome.
I love summer when everything is blooming and in season and lush. Winter makes me sad with the lack of green and leaves, but I feel less bad when I’m able to use my abundance of herbs and flowers from summer because I threw them up on this drying rack.
It’s super easy. Simply go outside and find a stick (not all sticks are created equal, when you find the right one, you’ll know). Buy leather cord from from a craft store and these great brass hooks from Amazon (click link here). Then put it all together and voila!
Then tell me what you’ll be drying!
The holidays bring home all the crafting and cozy vibes which I am undoubtedly here for. One of my favorites? Drying oranges to make into garland or to use for garnishing cocktails and drinks like in the previous post.
It’s the easiest thing.
Slice oranges with knife or mandolin (mandolin makes all the slices consistent, but like, watch your fingers).
Lay on paper towels and pat excess liquid away
Place on baking sheet
Bake at 200 degrees for 4 hours
Let cool for a couple of hours, then string, lay for decor, use for drinks, etc!
Let’s. Break. This. Bread.
Honestly, I roll my eyes to admit that I have too many thoughts as an adult of wishing that I had taken high school way more seriously, this coming from a teacher’s pet and kid who loved learning and reading and school and homework (for the most part). I do, however, wish there had been avenues to explore things that I was interested and curious about but didn’t immediately grasp. I was fascinated by so many things but we moved quickly through subjects and atoms and periodic tables and equations and my mind had more questions than they allowed answers for so I just waded through and tried to get passing grades. Did I tell you I cried whenever I didn’t get an A (annoyed at myself, even) so when I tell you I was happy with a C or D in math that came after an exorbitant amount of personal blows to the ego.
Intricacies of sourdough and the breads you have to whisper magic words to and leave gifts for them to rise are not necessarily my forte but a quest I aim to conquer soon. I knew I wanted to do my mom’s beer bread as a segment since I bring it to everything, the easiest thing to make if you are short on time or even ingredients. People will be impressed, bread will be eaten, you will leave the table with your head high…and you can still try to learn sourdough and watch every YouTube tutorial.
But beer bread is a great to:
Give as a gift, just combine dry ingredients and package together with a can or bottle of beer.
Bring to a dinner party with local butter, or make a dipping oil (people will think you fancy)
Enjoy by yourself, on the couch with a bottle of wine, the dipping oil, and some brie and honey.
Don’t do drugs. Stay in school. Make beer bread. Share with a friend. Or don’t, and eat it in bed by yourself.
An odd name for a cocktail, to be sure. I’ve said how much I hate long, drawn out paragraphs to recipes because we don’t need to know every minute detail of the weekend you just had, but this one does owe some backstory.
It was the week of the launch for Wild Wednesdays. I was exhausted, suffering from Impostor Syndrome, questioning everything I’ve ever done and will I ever make enough money to like, have a savings account much less buy a house or send my plant babies to college. The spiral hit and every issue I’d bottled up inside came bursting forth. I couldn’t stop it. Family issues, hurt and disappointment from romantic relationships, that comparison of legit everyone is better and more talented than me, feeling like everything I was touching wasn’t good enough, people were disappointed in me and I was running at 100000% but the production was 50%. That I was choosing to do this thing that I felt so compelled and drawn to but was it all a complete joke and should I just go get a desk job somewhere and let them start calling me Kathy and die a slow, drawn out death but be able to chat about my 401K.
So, instead of working out, my roommate sat at the kitchen table with me, tears streaming down my face, my breath catching and voice shaking as I unloaded it all, ashamed that I was feeling and acting like a child and yet I couldn’t stop. My chest ached and my heart hurt. Barely able to see through the barrage of tears, my hands fumbled around my bar cart, picking up bottles, putting them down, keeping the ones that felt right, until I had ingredients in front of me.
I needed to play and produce one thing right. Something to end the day. To close on a high note and be born anew in the morning. It wasn’t really about the cocktail, getting drunk or showing off my perfect life and perfect skills on social media. It was about the familiar, the unknown and, mostly, trusting my instincts. The same instincts that I’ve trusted through this entire process and that haven’t let me down, but because of the world, insecure people projecting their shit, lack of grounding and burning the candle at both ends, I’d started second guessing.
So I played.
I didn’t think. I didn’t second guess. I didn’t measure carefully. Tears ran down my face and splashed onto my arms, I’m sure a few forayed into the shaker. I felt.
It was exactly right.
And so was that night. While I don’t advocate for always treating your friends as therapists, there are time and places when that happens authentically and I am always and forever grateful to the humans who have been there for me in moments like that, and feel honored when I can be that person for one of my friends. We skipped a workout for a walk and Mexican Food, a movie and margaritas. I handed my worries to the next day and in the end, it was perfect.
It can be hard when you live the type of life that no one has a rule book for or hands you the to-do list to be successful or is like, here’s your tasks for the rest of your life. It’s exciting and thrilling, freeing and inspiring. The world is ours and can be intoxicating with the possibilities. And yet, to produce all the time can take you to dark places, is terrifying, constantly putting yourself out there because the separation between art/work/self is a constant battle.
So, close your laptop at 5, put down your brush, place your camera back into its case. Do something creative that isn’t for production. Write some thoughts to burn. Treat yourself like a child and eat some food and put yourself down to bed early.
Welcome to the first official episode of Wild Wednesdays! Happy Hour feat. “Shaken, Not Stirred.” Throughout this episode I’ll go through a little bit of history of the cocktail, liquor, creation of it and the supplies, intermixed with a narrative. Extra? Probably. Hilarious? Definitely.
“Shaken, not stirred,” the infamous quote from James Bond that transcends borders of land, time and space. For all of my love of cocktails and trying new things I have always been intimidated by the martini. I love ordering Dirty Martinis at the bar (the dirtier the better) but making them at home scared me, they seemed so classy, so refined and elegant, so….not me.
But then the pandemic hit, and I had less time with friends and more time to get annoyed at the fact that I was intimidated by them. So. Here we are. Turns out they’re super easy and now one of my favorite things.
Tune in below. Recipes are at the end of the page. Narratives are fun but when you’re basically working with a low-key professional actor (um, hey friend, next time give a girl a heads up) it makes you think twice about yourself acting in front of the camera ;)
Videography/editing: Angell Foster
Creative Direction/Still Photography: Ashtin Paige
Talent: John Pritchard
Location: Studio Nous
