Ahhhh…. Of course! A lid for the coffee mugs. Why didn’t I think of that? Well, no matter. The folks at Deneen Pottery thought of it for me. And you.
I like my coffee hot. Not mostly hot, or a little bit hot, or fairly hot. Steaming, piping, right-from-the-pot hot. Now, it takes me a while to drink a cup of coffee at my desk, sitting at this computer. And I have a really good coffee warmer (which fits my new mug perfectly). It keeps my coffee pretty hot. (Sigh.)
Then one day, I asked Niles Deneen if I could order a few of those lids. They came right away, and wow was I ever surprised! I popped one of those babies on my hot coffee and twenty minutes later, I took a sip and it was still really hot! Not a little, not mostly, not acceptably warm. Well, honey, color me happy!
Larry actually lets his coffee cool a bit before he drinks it. (Horrors!) So he just rolls his eyes at my hot coffee nirvana. That said, if you’re like me, you’ll want one for yourself.
This morning, a bride requested the recipe for the Blueberry White-Chocolate Chapelure she enjoyed here on her wedding day. My reply is included below. Just so you know, Chapelure is just French for ‘bread crumbs’. To the best of my knowledge, nobody else calls their oven-baked French toast ‘bread crumbs’, so if you’re offered chapelure anyplace besides Timberwolf Creek… well… you might want to get more information! Ok, here’s my answer for Annette:
It’s sooo easy. And I just typed it up for Letitia – so, voila! If you’re using commercially frozen blueberries, you’ll need to rinse off the juice oryou’ll have grey food. The blueberries you had here were from my Uncle Carroll’s garden, and picks them “in the morning before the sun hits them” and then dries them on cookie sheets so that they are “neat”. Best when using commercial to tuck in the berries *after* pouring the egg/milk/sugar/spice mixture over the bread, the prevent them from smearing.
Berry White Chocolate Chapelure
Baker’s Joy cooking spray
4 slices of bread (approximate!)
2 croissants
1/4 cup berries (either frozen blueberries, or dried cranberries)
1/4 cup white chocolate chips
4 eggs (if using ‘medium’ eggs, you’ll need 5)
1 1/2 cups milk
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
dash of nutmeg, mace, cloves
maple syrup
Using individual ramekins, spray with cooking spray.
Into a big mixing bowl, cut leftover bread into cubes. Be careful not to ‘smoosh’ the bread. Use more than one kind of bread (French, sour dough, oatmeal). Tear the croissants. Toss the bread to mix it up. Distribute randomly into the dishes. You want the dishes to be over-full. Don’t press it down.
Tuck in frozen blueberries OR dried cranberries, and then add white chocolate chips.
Mix eggs and milk with brown sugar, spices and vanilla. Pour carefully over bread mixture.
Put in the refrigerator, and then cover lightly with plastic wrap -don’t tuck it in around the dishes, just lay it over the top. You want the bread to lift as it soaks up the eggs & milk. Refrigerate overnight.
In the morning, remove from the fridge, take off the plastic, and let stand at room temp for 20-30 minutes. Bake at 350 degrees about half an hour. It should be puffed and lightly browned. Serve with warm syrup on the side.
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Note: this adapts really easily to whatever ingredients you have on hand. You’ll want two add-ins… like
–Raisin Walnut
–Blackberry Pecan
–Apple Cinnamon (peel the apples & chop small, sprinkle the top of the chapelure *lightly* with cinnamon and then sugar, before baking)
–Brown Sugar Peach (this is added AFTER the chapelure comes out of the fridge, in the morning – drain a can of peaches and toss with a little brown sugar and lay the fruit right on top of the bread, and then bake)
It’s a pretty special day for this wedding fairygodmother. Four years ago, we married a charming couple. The bride was attended by her young teenaged daughter, who was behaving like a young teenaged daughter. As a distraction, we offered to do a photo shoot of her alone. Turned out that we all had a lot of fun with that photo shoot – bride, groom, me, Larry, and our model. My job during a photo shoot is to act as stylist, setting up the scene, posing the subject, clearing away anything that doesn’t belong in the photo, and distracting people so that they will relax, smile, laugh, look in a certain direction, or whatever it takes to get the appropriate facial expression. Well, this was a teenaged girl. So, of course she was self-conscious. We all spend about five years being painfully self-conscious and wishing the camera would find our inner all-grown-up and glamorous selves that we try to project. All of us. And this pretty girl was throwing these poses right out of a magazine that just weren’t working for her, because it was clear she was pretending to be someone else…. so we got talking. I told her that she was very pretty (true) and that when she got a little older, she was going to be a knock-out (true) and that when she went to her first prom, with all six of her dates, I wanted a picture. She started laughing, she relaxed, and we got some remarkably beautiful pictures of her. Today, she sent me a prom photo. Gorgeous girl, just one date. Made my whole day.
This gorgeous day lily is called Moonlit Snow. Larry gave me this plant for Mother’s Day about eleventy bazillion years ago. Ok, more than ten years, anyway. I planted it right out front, and it has propagated and grown into a healthy lily that produces these enormous blooms. Today, there are about a dozen greeting our guests. Sigh! Lilies make me smile.
The bride said, “I want my wedding bouquet to be filled with light, airy flowers… like you just walked out into a field and picked it.” Ah, romance. She loved it!
I’m having fun, updating the anniversary picture on the Maggie Valley Weddings website every day. Nostalgic for me! Every wedding couple is unique, so every wedding has its own flavor, its own memories. I have the best job in the world. Oh yes, I do!!
