fauk  tail

And yes, I threw my made-up-name party this last weekend. Good friends, sugary drinks, and lots of food…it makes a girl happy! We tried to invite folks that we have been friends with in different walks of life—friends from Minnesota who had also relocated to Utah, roommates from our undergraduate days at BYU, and people we work with. It was a wonderful group and it made me pretty happy to see friends that I haven’t seen for over 5 years!

It was a great way to kick off the holidays and I find myself wanting to throw another one!

If you want to throw a non-alcoholic but adult-like event, here are my biased rules for getting it done—1. Don’t have your cabinets laquered a day before the party (your house will be very cold from airing it out); 2. Buy all your food and flowers from Costco (It’s one trip and all the appetizers are easy to make); 3. Spend most of your time shopping for cute glasses (the part I enjoyed the most!); 4. Designate someone to take pictures (what you are seeing here is about all I got!); and 5. Once the first couple walks in, let it all go (as in I hadn’t finished cleaning my daughters’ bedroom and I knew people were going to walk through it. I got over it.).

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Want to throw your own fauktail party? Here are my recipes…but be warned, I made these up and the quantities are simply estimates of how I made them. They are all super (may I add dooper?) delicious. Feel free to add or subtract from these faux-mock-cocktails. Most make about 3/4ths of a pitcher (about 4-6 glasses depending on the size of the glass).

TROPICAL FIZZ (inspired by Planter’s Punch)

2 1/2 cups orange juice

2 1/2 cups sprite (or ginger ale)

1 1/2 cups pineapple juice

2 cups of orange sherbet (you can also substitute pineapple sherbet)

1/2 cup of sweetened lime juice

garnish with 2-3 cubes of fresh pineapple on a skewer

Blend all the ingredients together and garnish with the pineapple skewer.

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TOMMY COLLINS SLUSHIE (inspired by Tom Collins)

1 package of slightly melted Edy’s Lemonade Fruit Bars (Use all 6 Popsicles in the box)

4 cups of Minute Maid Lemonade

2 1/2 cups of Ginger Ale

1/2 cup of Wildberry Martini Mixer

Raspberries (dropped at the bottom of the glass)

Blend all the ingredients together. Drop a few raspberries at the bottom of a glass. Pour in the blended drinks.

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3 cups of Martinelli

3 cups of Ginger Ale

1/4 to 1/2 cup of Sweetened Lime Juice

Granny Apple wedge

Stir together the ingredients and garnish with a Granny Apple wedge on a martini glass.

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CARINA’S SHIRLY TEMPLE (obviously, my take on this recipe..because I didn’t feel like mixing sprite and gingerale:)

4 to 5 cups of sprite

1/2 cup of Maraschino cherry syrup

2 Maraschino cherries on a pick or 1 Maraschino cherry with it’s stem dropped in the bottom.

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My fifth drink was just a number of different bubblies from Costco and the supermarket that was garnished simply with a strawberry on the rim of a wine glass. That gave guests another option and freed me up to make more of the other drinks.

At the end of the day, “fancying up” a fauktail is all about the garnish or some salt/sugar to the rim of a party glass. Messing around with recipes just made it alot more fun for this hostess.

Hope you get to make a fauxtail for yourself soon!

Cheers! Carina

That’s right—I’m obsessed with the TV show The Bachelor. I held my usual Bachelor finale party (food and anticipation in tow), and was a happy camper tonight when Brad picked Emily. Yes, you can write SUCKER on my forehead…a sucker for reality TV.

Anybody want my party leftovers?

Carina’s Citrus Marinade

Throw together the following ingredients and let meat (chicken, pork, etc) marinade for an hour and bake or grill:

juice of 1 lemon

zest of 1 lemon

juice of 1 orange

zest of 1 orange

3-6 finely chopped garlic cloves

2 springs fresh rosemary (finely chopped)

handful of basil leaves (finely chopped)

spring of thyme (leaves pulled)

salt and paper

For you know, that this is all you can do with a zucchini of this size. So it was double dessert night and nobody was complaining at my house.

Zucchini Bread

This recipe was taken from All Recipes.com. The user comments were really useful. I ended up using 1 cup of brown sugar to replace one cup of white sugar and doubled the zucchini used (4 cups). It turned out to be TWO zucchini breads (We did one for the neighbor without chocolate chips and one for the kids WITH chocolate chips). Visit the original recipe here. This is my variation on it:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 1/4 cups white sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract (or more)
• 4 cups grated zucchini

1. Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
2. Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
3. Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.
4. Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

Puddin’ Pie

I know you’ve had this dessert before. It’s so easy and delicious. My favorite backup for a yummy summer treat. It’s vanilla pudding, cool whip, graham cracker crust, and fresh berries. I tend to go for the premade pie crust but I admire anyone who makes it from scratch. I mean, it is just graham crackers and butter afterall. I also buy the no-sugar vanilla pudding and the fat free cool whip.

• 1 Graham cracker crust
• 1 vanilla pudding package/2 cups of milk
• 1 cool whip
• package of strawberries (and or blueberries, raspberries)

Put together vanilla pudding as instructed on the package. Pour into crust and let sit in the fridge for an hour. Top with Cool Whip and cut Strawberries/Berries on top.

It looks pretty and it’s effortless! Very summery with the berries on top, huh? If you wanted to get fancy you could add glaze to the top of the strawberries (It would also make the strawberries last longer).

And of course, the best part, eating it! Yes, it makes a mess:).

With all these recipes, I have been compiling them in my little recipe box. Pretty soon I’m going to take them to get laminated to keep them from spills.

I wanted to share my Cauliflower Soup recipe. It’s really good…packed with vitamins and a bit of fat. I love using fresh herbs in this. It makes the whole thing really fresh! This is really yummy in the fall for an evening treat.

Carina’s Cauliflower Soup

1 head of cauliflower

1 pint of half and half OR cream

4 cups of chicken broth

1/2 cup of chopped onion

3 cloves of chopped garlic

olive oil

2 Springs of Rosemary

2 Springs of Thyme

Salt and pepper to taste

Parmesan Cheese

Bacon (optional)

What gives this soup all it’s flavor is roasted cauliflower. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. On a baking pan hand toss the cauliflower head (roughly chopped), olive oil (drizzled over it), salt, pepper, and 2 springs of rosemary. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Be sure and move around the cauliflower half way. You’ll get a nice brown color. on the edges. While the cauliflower is in the oven, saute 2 tbs of olive oil, garlic, and onion in a large pot for about 5 minutes. Add the thyme (chopped). Pull the cauliflower out of the oven and add to the pot. Saute all together for another 5 minutes.

Add the chicken broth and bring to a boil. I sometimes like to let it sit and simmer at this point for about 20-30 minutes so the cauliflower gets soft. Sometimes I’ll let it sit longer or short though depending on when I started the pot. Add the half and half (or for a creamier soup use cream). Take portions of the soup and blend in a blender or a hand mixer until you get a smooth consistancy.

Let the soup simmer for as long as you want. Add a sprig of thyme, a little parmasian, and even some bacon bits to the top before serving. Yum, yum!

Photos are Copyright of Carina Gardner

 And last night when we had parfaits again, Siri declared the parfaits inedible due to the bananas. So, I guess my attempts to get some fruit in this dessert are now thwarted. Besides, Felicity really only eats the “cream” part anyway. Like daughter, like father. Well, maybe next time we’ll just make ice cream parfait and call it good! Then everyone will eat the cream! 

I really think this is a very easy recipe as it requires very little work and ingredients I generally have in my kitchen.

There are basically two parts: Cook the Salmon (and I did Chicken too because I knew my ids would prefer that) and Make the Lemon sauce. Let me see if I can decipher these ingredients from the picture…

SLOW-ROASTED Salmon with spring herb sauce

1 1/2 pouds fresh wild king or sockeye salmon fillet

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Kosher salt

1 cup dry white wine

3 tablespoons finely chopped shallots

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

6 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup mixed coarsely chopped soft-leafed herbs such as basil, chervil, chives, dill, fennel, lovage, mint, sorrel, or tarragon, plus additional small tender herb springs for garnish

Coarse sea salt for finishing

(and remember that if you have my kitchen recipe digital kit that you put this one on a recipe card for your kitchen! It’s a keeper! I’ve been pretty good about documenting all my recipes as I have had many new ones recently and my little recipe box is getting nicely filled!)

So I’m sure you don’t have ALL those ingredients in your kitchen. I just bastardized it a bit, heehee. I only had flat leaf pasley and I used dried thyme to help. I did have the lemons and butter, but no shallots. I substituted a finely chopped red onion instead. I also threw in pasta as our carb…I know, not traditional with Salmon, but I knew that’s what my kids would eat.

For the salmon and chicken, you just let the meats sit in olive oil for about 30 minutes and then stick them in the oven until done. Salt them before they go in the oven. I then put the pasta on and made the lemon sauce. All you need to do is mix the wine, lemon, shallots, and a teaspoon of salt in a pan and let it boil until it reduces to half. Then whisk in the butter. Easy peasy!

And that’s it! Combine the pasta with some of the sauce, throw on the fresh herbs at the end (for the dry ones, I think I threw them into the sauce…once again bastardized).