Pages

An Open Cookbook

An Open Cookbook

3.28.2011

Butter Sage Carrots


I thank my lucky stars for having such a good group of girlfriends here in Seattle.  Last week I had the most lovely group of seven girls over for a midweek dinner party.  We call our dinner gatherings GDC, short for Girls Dinner Club.  It has been an evolving group of girls for over three years.  About once a month, or sometimes once every few months, we either choose a restaurant or go to someone's house to eat, laugh and have girl time. 

We have been loosely using the alphabet to determine the theme...sometimes we mix it up and just go to a place that sounds good.  But this time we focused on the letter 'F', because of a certain hair straightening device: the flat iron.  For months now, we have been talking about the idea of flat ironing my hair, to see what a tamed version of my hair would look like.  I get my hair cut at chez moi, so I was really curious to see how evenly it has been done.  N so kindly brought over the flat iron and French wine. 



My kitchen is quite small for one person.  So multiply that by seven, and you've got lots of windows open, fans going and elbow bumping.  As K said, it was like Thanksgiving dinner...in March.  It was the perfect opportunity to put my kitchen tools and dishes to good use.



We sort of stretched the creativity of the dish names to include adjectives like Fun + Wontons= Funtons.  Our menu items complemented each other so well in color, taste and presentation.  Wow was it all good!  It consisted of:

  • Farfalle pasta with pinenuts and roasted red peppers
  • Fiesta salad with black beans, avocado, corn and tomatoes
  • Asparagus wrapped with blue cheese, prosciutto, bread and butter
  • Butter sage carrots
  • Shiitake mushroom risotto
  • Beef and Broccoli Wontons
  • Baked salmon
  • Brown sugar glazed pineapple over coconut ice cream
We had so much food and so many leftovers, that the party went on for days.  Thank you M, T, K, M, N, and M for coming over and brightening my life. Xoxo

Penny the mascot and fan of our food


Butter Sage Carrots
Adapted from Cooking Light
Yields 4-5 servings

1 Tbsp butter
1 tsp olive oil
3 cups carrots, diagonally and thinly sliced
1/4 tsp salt
Black pepper to taste
1 1/2 Tbsp fresh sage, diced

Heat a medium/large skillet on medium heat.  Add butter.  After butter melts, add olive oil and swirl around.  Toss in the carrots.  Saute and stir for 5-10 minutes, until carrots are cooked well.  Add salt and pepper to taste, making sure each carrot is coated.  Sprinkle with the sage and saute for a few more minutes.  Serve immediately as a side dish to pasta or chicken.

















5 comments:

Jenn said...

Looks like tons of fun. I discovered carrots with thyme at Thanksgiving this year. Yum? But, what happened to the straight hair picture? (or at least a quick summary of the results- is it straight?).

Jenn said...

Meant to say Yum! :)

Haley said...

Oooh, looks good! I love the idea of a Girls Dinner Club!

And how did your hair end up turning out? Did you like it? I can only imagine you with straight hair...

rmz said...

um...where is the pic of your straight hair???!!!

Alli Shircliff said...

Thanks for all the comments Jenn, Haley and RMZ! The straight hair looked pretty good, considering the few pieces I had to touch up with the scissors. I felt like I had to dress differently the next day, because my hair was so...calm (relatively speaking).