We will share our cooking tips, our ingredient tips and sources, our planning tips, our food and drink pairing tips and our stories to help you make every dinner a party! Long before I was a good cook, long before I opened my first catering company, I was the dinner party guru of our social circle, even though I was making ricochet biscuits
Then, after devouring 500 cookbooks, torturing my fri
ends with new recipes and finally getting it right, I had a few of the neighbors over for dinner. The following day my next door neighbor stopped in to thank us and asked me to sit down. Laurie, how do we get on the A list for your parties? Or at least the B list? I laughed and looked at him. Oh! You’re serious! This comment was the highest compliment I think I ever received in most of my years of cooking. At least, until I opened my last restaurant; Logs Gastropub in Lincoln, Montana. 6+ years later people still comment to me on Logs' food, atmosphere and fun. I miss those days. The days of making all my food from scratch, sourcing fresh and locally grown produce or locally raised meats. The dining scene is changing. What used to be a tradition of service, specialty items and outdoing the restaurant next door has been replaced with door dash and trucks of pre-made, pre-seasoned food pulling up to the loading docks of restaurants across USA. I long for the days of the A list, B list or whatever list you want to call it. I long for the dinner party and I want to be a part of a new wave of dining. Partners in dine
Nora: Country Girl Goes International
There were no cloth napkins at my Mother's parents Ohio farmhouse. And, they were proud of it. There were cloth napkins at my Father's parent's house in Sheridan, Montana. Family gatherings in Ohio was less proper, but more memorable: fried chicken, corn on the cob, watermelon, pies, and purple boiled eggs. My Father's family focused more on manners than on food, which also has its value. And, then we moved to Spain. For a while my parents allowed me to go native, but our British friends and other ex-pats brought their own food traditions into my life. Thank goodness for those lessons in manners! The main rule my Mother had was that we were not allowed to say, "I don't like that." And, then we moved to Butte, Montana, which is its own food story for another day. The running theme is that I have eaten with local shepherds in Spain, as a guest Governor's Mansion in Montana, and with a popouri of people and places in between. Each situation is a food sharing adventure.
