Warming the home 3 months late
Warming the home 3 months late
On hosting, making home, and warm fuzzy things
When my therapist admitted they didn’t know how October got here, I felt incredibly validated.
The gauntlet of travel - international and domestic - over the last few months has been the best problem to have, and also quite a disorienting one.
The fun type of busyness creeps up on you in more unexpected ways. I am deeply grateful for all the new experiences, travel, and food these last few months have brought. But this sudden break in a constantly scheduled highlight reel makes the quieter times feel like I have nothing to show for it. There's a nagging voice when I’m just trying to settle that breaks the silence.
For me, it comes out in forms of:
I should be going out to all the new restaurants in DC
I should be cooking all the recipes I’ve been saving but have had no time to make
I should be meal prepping and creating routine that I haven’t had since March
I should be seeing all the friends I haven’t seen consistently
I should be going to all the new events and pop-up’s now that I’m back
It’s an annoying voice for sure! Somewhat nasally, too.
After our lovely Memorial Day weekend in Charleston (see excellent BBQ consumed at Lewis BBQ here), and my work trip in Burlington the week after (I have no food to document as most meals were held buffet style in a ski resort). September felt like I was just on the cusp of a normal, recalibrated schedule.
With the travel now winding down, I can admit to myself that I am not the jet setter that I wish I could be. I chronically love having a sense of place, and I will do whatever is necessary to make that happen, even with the odds against me.
What are the odds you might ask? Our equally nagging, unresolved, partially-floored apartment due to some minor HVAC leak complications in June. Our furniture has found its place, settled over patches of concrete and insulation yet to be repaired. At this point, we are collecting our heavily discounted rent, and making do.
We have made initial attempts at finally settling in. We had our first esteemed guest stay in our den (ily a milli Digs), we meal prepped, and we finally had a three-month-delayed housewarming party, despite receiving any notification of a scheduled floor repair.
Personally, the only way to make a place feel lived in, is by packing people you love into it.
I am one of the many incredibly unique individuals who goes feral for all fall related things. With the cozy season in full throttle, and the last of my travels wrapped up for the foreseeable future, I leaned into a cozy menu for this housewarming.
Hosting for 15 people at the ripe-and-broke age of 25 with high expectations and a limited budget is an art, not a science. It requires intimately understanding what you’re working with, and accepting that inflation will never match the girl math that justifies that hosting a party for your friends is cost efficient. Welcome to the inner workings of my brain for menu planning.
The vision
I like picking one theme that strings itself through the dishes in the spread. It could be recipes from the same chef, overlapping cuisines, or consistent memories. Even if people don’t notice, it helps me figure out how everything ties together.
For my first real spread in the apartment, I wanted to make dishes that reflected what I ate growing up at family gatherings. Making certain dishes that have rotated in our family events, and sharing them with friends is a great way to make this random apartment that we frantically applied to in May feel like it was on purpose.
The menu
for snacking
buffalo cauliflower dip - I used the base recipe from our buff chick dip queen, Aunt Polly, whose recipe is featured in this prior newsletter. Cauliflower needed a helping hand, so I squeezed a shit ton of water out of riced cauliflower, sautéed it with spices, and roasted it for a meager ¾ cup yield. Don’t be like me. Just get two big heads of cauliflower, cut into florets, douse with neutral oil, and flavor with chipotle, cayenne, garlic powder, onion powder, and salt, and roast it at 425F until there’s a bit of char.
bloody m(er)ry pickle dip - Admittedly this has no family nostalgia, but was an opportunity to conduct consumer testing on some #sponsoredproduct. I consider it a distant high-low cousin to the dairy-laden buff dip. I'm not a recipe developer, but when The Real Dill reached out to collaborate on a recipe, how could I say no? I’ve been riffing a pickle dip concoction for the last three friend functions, so I figured why not try it for this? Find the recipe here on my Instagram, which uses their pickles and bloody mary rimming spice. Give it a like and save it if you love me.
LIDL hummus - Yes, LIDL hummus. Because at the end of the day, I am not making hummus like my dad, but I sure as hell will be replating it in a bowl, swooping it with a spoon and topping with nice olive oil and za’atar that Will brought back from Jordan. It’s all about high-low, babes.
for soaking up wine and the batch cocktail
Our friends are lovely people who bring nice wine and sometimes the mom in me feels that we need just a few carbs to soak up said wine. Was I successful in mitigating that risk myself? Probably not. Anyway, here’s what I made to line some tums.
pesto pasta salad - If we were eating dinner at my grandparents in the summer, we were almost always eating pesto pasta, made with basil from their garden. Pesto pasta sounds adorable when said out loud by children, is a crowd pleaser, and customizable. I used @grossypelosi’s pesto recipe from his new cookbook, Let’s Eat! I added arugula, baked prosciutto, mozz, sun dried tomatoes, and a squeeze of lemon juice to make a pesto pasta that stuck a little bit more to your bones.
caesar sally & croutons - My love for caesar salads spurred from watching my dad make the dressing in a massive wooden bowl at dinner parties growing up. Watching him whisk the shit out of the dressing into an emulsion was pure magic. For my event, I chopped 6 heads of lettuce, as I was taught when working at a sandwich shop in high school, and toasted off some old bread loaves for croutons. Pretty sure not a single soul ate it. But I sure did for a week after.
for a fall treat!
pumpkin loaf - Again, no family relevance. However, I am a sucker for pumpkin spiced anything. This Smitten Kitchen pumpkin bread recipe leaves you with a tall, tender, and crispy-topped loaf to feed many. I skipped the grated nutmeg and dumped approximately 1 ½ tablespoons of a pumpkin spice mix that I made last year, instead of all the spice measurements in the recipe. She came out gorgeous, and made a few lovely breakfasts the week after.
gochujang sugar cookies - My friend made the infamous Eric Kim gochujang cookies, that she describes as a bougie snickerdoodle. The ripples of gochujang lend a spicy-sweet combo that punches a bit higher above pumpkin spice’s weight class.
box brownies - No amount of pumpkin spice will satiate someone who just wants straight chocolate. Box brownies are suggested for this reason.
to drink
batch cocktail - Nailing the last fall y’all motif into the coffin, we made a bourbon batched cocktail made with a blood orange tea syrup. It’s a lighter drinking old fashioned. The recipe is dramatically labeled the “unchained melody” from Maggie Hoffman’s Batch Cocktails book. I will gladly share the recipe if you’d like!
wine - so much (hiccups) wine.
And that’s it! Nothing to it, just probably a full day of prep. But I truly can’t think of a better way to spend my Saturday, or a better reason to feel violently hungover on my couch all day the following Sunday. See you in October!