Anatomy of a Dinner Party: a day in the life of a hospitalityaholic
 

Soup party

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Pork Meatball Thai Inspired Soup

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Yesterday I had the good fortune to spend a bit of time with Miss Lisa taking photos for her beer magazine at the Brick Store Pub in Decatur.  She asked me to shoot the cover! So exciting. I felt like Annie Lebowitz.  We got some really cute shots of Sally and one of her co-workers serving up some beer with a cheese platter.  Of course, because this is for Lisa’s mag, I can’t share the photos with you yet.  But soon.

Afterward, I picked up the dogs from camp and headed home to make supper.  The night before Eric and I had watched a little Iron Chef and saw Morimoto make these gorgeous pork meatballs and dump them into a soup to boil.  I have ground pork!  And veggies and stock!  I stopped at the store to pick up some udon noodles and I was good to go. The weather has rapidly cooled down here in Atlanta and all we want to do is eat soup and drink hot chocolate. And bake – this weather really has me wanting to bake bread, cake, whatever.

Anyhoo, take a look at the process:


Gather all your ingredients


Add some ground lemongrass and ginger into your ground pork
It comes in tubes in the produce section – super cool!


Squish it up nicely with your hands


Form into meatballs – they don’t have to be perfect

At this point, you will want to pour your two containers of stock into your pot to boil. Chop and add your vegetables (not the cilantro, yet).  Get it boiling but good and drop your meatballs right in. Go ahead – you can’t hurt them.  Then add your noodles and cook for about 15 minutes until the noodles are done.


Almost ready to eat


Two steaming bowls of porky, noodley goodness
Don’t forget to add your cilantro before serving


Hot, meaty and hearty

I really hope you are treating yourselves to some tasty, hot, stick-to-your-ribs dishes as the weather cools and the leaves fall from the trees.

And don’t forget to go out and wish on the moon tonight – it is gorgeous right now!

xoox, Patti

Grindhouse Burgers, a Chef Introduction and Soup With the Neighbors

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

Atlanta is a big city. But it is also a small town.  Since living here on and off since 1992, I’ve met a lot of people.  It’s difficult not to run into someone one knows when out and about. Saturday was no exception.

Eric and I decided to try our town’s newest burger sensation, Grindhouse Burgers in the Sweet Auburn Curb Market.  We had not been in line a few minutes and I heard my named called behind me. It was our friend Patricia Tinsley, with her friend Emily, another food blogger.  As always, Miss Tinsley had a full plate of activities for the day and one of them included burgers.  We had a chance to meet the owner, Jeff and enjoy some amazing burgers.  I had the regular grindhouse burger with the chocolate peanut butter shake and Eric enjoyed the Apache, which included roasted green chiles. Both fantastic.  While we were still in line waiting to place our order, another of Patricia’s friends showed up.  It was Brad, the chef at Dogwood, a restaurant that has been high on my list of places to try. In my opinion, it’s always a special day when you get to meet a real chef.  I consider myself something of a chef groupie, and am always thrilled to meet the person behind the food.

If you are looking for an awesome burger, get yourself over to Grindhouse, STAT!

Tummies full, we cruised over to Edgewood to pick up another dog bed (last one destroyed when we put our little hooligans in the bedroom when Pat and Deacon came to dinner – it was quite the spectacular mess, I will tell you!)  And then popped over to Kroger for mushrooms, since I was in charge of making stuffed mushrooms that night for Tracy’s soup party.

Tracy is our neighbor across the street and also a zombie afficionado.  Not only did she participate in the zombie walk, but she and her mom sewed the most incredible Marie Antoinette costume for Tracy to parade in. Gorgeous.

The soup Tracy decided on was potato soup topped with lotsa cheese. It was so good. Everyone seemed to show up with either an appetizer or dessert. There was a cheese dip that used 2 pounds of cheese, a silky smooth salmon dip, fruit and cheese, cookies and tasty sweet potato cupcakes.  Everyone had a fabulous time.  Eric and I keep on meeting the coolest new people everywhere we go. Here are some snapshots from our fun time last night:


Nibbles!


Soup on the Stove


Our Sweet Hostess, Tracy


Bowls Waiting for Soup


New Friends!


Chioke and Taruan, two of my most Favorites!

Anyhoo – it was scads of fun. It was also, BYOB – bring your own bowl. Which is so clever when you are feeding soup to a crowd of 40.

Enjoy your Sunday. It’s a very busy day for us.  Brunch with Matt, Clint and Holly and then dinner with Danny and John.

xoxo, Patti