A beautiful weekend, full of family, friends and food....

So the weekend started with a quiet dinner with my husband and daughter. I spent part of the afternoon cooking dark chocolate brownies and white chocolate, macadamia nut, dried cranberry blondies for our neighborhood cookout. While pulling them out of the pan, one of the blondies 'accidentally' broke, so it became my taste tester brownie. Man, are they good. The right amount of buttery....buttery-ness, brown sugar richness, white chocolate sweetness and the slight tartness from those cranberries. I had sprinkled a little kosher salt on top to offset the extra sweet from the white chocolate, which was the perfect call. The way I can tell if the food worked is if the platter is cleaned shortly after I set it down and it was. I mean there wasn't a crumb left. yay!

I went to see Julie and Julia Saturday with my friend Kellie. Wow. What a fun movie. Anyone who has any interest in cooking--or eating--would love this movie. And Meryl Street---just owned the body, voice and mannerisms of Julia Child. She was brilliant, as she always is. If the storyline was true to the actual life of Julia Child, she would have been someone I would have loved to hang with. She was so fun and full of life and had a great sense of humor. The love that she and her husband shared was beautiful--they were truly in love with each other. Even though French cooking is not my thing, I'm more of a rustic cook, it made me want to grab Julia's French cookbook, pick one of the recipes and just do it in her honor--kind of like Julie did in the movie with the entire cookbook. The scene with the lobsters was sooooo me. I've never 'knifed' a live lobster and will probably cry the first time. lol....it is really good.

Dinner today with the family went very well. The weather was just perfect around noontime, so we ate outside on the porch. The neighborhood was quiet and it was the perfect Southern luncheon. On the menu: baked eggs and poblano peppers stuffed with homemade turkey chorizo (for the spicy), baked eggs with a light pork sausage (for the mild), sweet potato & leftover shortrib hash with maple syrup, homemade roasted 4-nut & fruit granola, an heirloom tomato parmesan tart, organic chicken sausage (those were bought) and lots of fresh fruit. Also cinnamon bread and mimosa's. It was all spectacular. I have to say out of all of it, the tomato parmesan tart still blows me away. It is soooo simple and so rustic, but just incredibly delicious and very light. I could have eaten the entire tart myself! I had a blast making this brunch. There were lots of leftovers for the family, too. I love when someone says "if there are any leftovers, I want some of this!". That is the greatest compliment to my cooking ever--that is was so good, you want it a second time.

While the family nibbled on some of the eggs for leftovers tonight, I had a pomegranate mimosa. To me, one who doesn't usually drink, it's a perfect way to cap a perfect weekend. I hope yours was blessed and beautiful as well!