Warm Winter Salad...yes warm.

I was all in the middle of posting another recipe but I have put that on hold to give you all this one. THIS IS FABULOUS!! I swear it's just as mind-blowingly flavor packed as the original panzanella but it's warm! Which makes it great for winter. Who wants to eat salad in the freezing winter months? Coming home from outside shoveling snow to eat......salad?!?!? No thank you! I personally want warmth and hearty flavors. Unfortunately, I also have an aversion to broth based soups. I love cream based soups but broth based: chicken noodle, french onion, minestrone, nope, not interested. But, that's really for another post.

I found this in a Martha Stewart magazine about the Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. I wish I had known about this bakery when I was there this summer. Alas. But thanks to Martha, I can enjoy some of the recipes from there, including this amazing salad.

It's the perfect answer to my need for hearty flavors and warmth. I was a little worried about making it since the original recipe called for lettuce that my husband has termed 'spiny lettuce' and categorically refuses to eat because it stabs him in the mouth. He had a bad experience once. Long story.

Anyway, digressing again. In order to make it more palatable to him, I did change the recipe a little bit. I also didn't have all the ingredients for the original dressing but mine came out great so here it all is...

Warm Winter Salad

Herb Vinaigrette

1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried tarragon
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 large clove garlic, crushed
1 1/2 tbsp Dijon mustard

Combine, mix thoroughly. Set aside.

Salad

1 loaf really good Italian or sourdough bread, sliced thickly
3 small Belgian endives, leaves separated
1 bag butter lettuce/radicchio mix
1 bag spring mix greens
4 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled
1/2 cup hazelnuts, toasted
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

Either in the oven or on a grill pan, toast each slice on both sides until golden brown. I added a smidgen of butter to each side and a sprinkling of cayenne pepper for extra oomph. While that's toasting, get all the lettuces together for a rinsing. Pat dry. Toast the hazelnuts also.

Bad idea.

I thought it'd be a great time saver to just toss the nuts onto the grill pan with the bread. I was wrong. It took forever trying to scoop them up off the pan before they burned. They tasted great but I'd still recommend you toast them in the oven on a cookie sheet. Much easier to handle.

When the bread is done toasting, remove and slice into roughly 1 inch cubes.

Now toss the lettuce onto the hot grill pan. I'm not kidding. I got the idea from that Brewery I visited in Monteray Bay. Although the lettuce won't get the charcoal flavor from a grill pan, it does heat up the lettuce. Only leave the lettuce on the grill pan for two minutes, turning once.

 
Remove lettuce to plates. Top with bread pieces, hazelnuts, bacon and Parmesan cheese.

Stir dressing and pour over the top of each salad. Serve immediately.

YUM!

 If anybody does make this, I'd love to know what you think. Oh, and hubby said this is definitely a 'keep' recipe, despite the weird lettuces. He did really appreciate the omission of the spiny lettuce also.

Peanut Butter Pie

I have a peanut butter obsession. I blame it on my mother who has an equal obsession for peanut butter. Peanut butter on toast, on pancakes (which is the only way to eat pancakes), on a bagel with honey, on a spoon right from the jar, on Oreos. But the best way to eat peanut butter is covered in chocolate.

So with that in mind, I give you my mother's peanut butter pie recipe. I have her permission, promise.

Peanut Butter Pie

1 ready-made pie crust (I like Sara Lee)

For the Bottom Layer:

3/4 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1 tbsp butter
3 tbsp water
1/4 cup powdered sugar

For the Peanut Butter Filling:

1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup all natural peanut butter
2 cups heavy whipping cream
2 tbsp powdered sugar

For the Top Layer:

1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
2 tbsp butter
4 tbsp milk
2 tsp corn syrup

Bake empty pie crust according to the package directions, remembering to prick the pie on bottom and sides. Allow to cool.

Meanwhile, melt 1 tbsp butter with 3 tsp water in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the 1/4 cup powdered sugar and mix well. Add 3/4 cup chocolate chips and mix until completely melted and smooth. Add more water if needed for spreading consistency. When crust is cooled, spread chocolate mixture evenly along bottom and sides of pie crust. Refrigerate until firm.

 I made two pies. Half the time, double the calories.

In a larger saucepan, combine 1 cup butter with 1 cup brown sugar. Cook on medium heat, stirring often, until mixture is melted and smooth. Refrigerate to cool.

In a stand mixer, (or a bowl with a hand mixer), combine 2 cups heavy whipping cream with 2 tbsp powdered sugar. Mix into oblivion until stiff peaks form. Remove whipped cream from mixer bowl into another bowl, cover and refrigerate. In the same stand mixer bowl, combine 1 cup peanut butter and cooled brown sugar mixture. Beat until fully incorporated. Add 1 1/2 cups of whipped cream to peanut butter mixture. Beat until mixture is smooth and creamy. (reserve the rest of the whipped cream for future use or just eat it right out of the bowl). Pour peanut butter mixture into the chocolate covered pie crust. Refrigerate until firm.

Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, melt 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, 2 tbsp butter, 4 tbsp milk and 2 tsp corn syrup over medium heat. Stir constantly to avoid burnage. When chocolate is fully melted and of a spreading consistency (add more milk if necessary), carefully pour melted chocolate over the peanut butter layer of the pie. Spread with a spatula to evenly coat, being careful not to over flow the crust rim. Refrigerate until firm.

Serve with vanilla ice cream if desired. (I never said it was healthy)

The Best Chili Ever

I hate chili. I really, really do. My dear mother has spent years making chili, the regular kind and something entitled 'Salsa Chili', which many people love and I, alas, cannot stand. I don't know what it is about it. I eat all the ingredients of chili in other recipes but I have never found a recipe for chili that I ever liked...till recently.

It came from one of my best friends, the same that introduced me to Homemade Pop Tarts. Her chili is wonderful; every time I make it.

The Best Chili Ever

3 cans crushed tomatoes
1 can red kidney beans
1 can black beans
1 can chili beans
1 1/2 lbs ground beef
2 tbsp olive oil
2 bell peppers, chopped
1 good sized onion, chopped
1 good beer
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp cumin
1 tsp red pepper flakes
2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp Tabasco sauce

In a saute pan, combine olive oil, peppers and onion. Saute until onion is translucent. Pour tomatoes into a large stock pot over medium heat. With a slotted spoon, drain the peppers and onions and add them to the tomatoes.

Add ground beef to pan and saute until cooked through. While beef is cooking, add beans to the tomatoes. When the beef is cooked, drain and add to tomatoes. Add spices, sugar and beer to the tomatoes.

Simmer for two hours. Taste, if it's too spicy, add a little more beer. If it's not spicy enough, add a little more Tabasco and cayenne.

Serve topped with sour cream and cheddar cheese with tortilla chips for dipping.

Mama's Orange Pear Cranberry Sauce

Autumn...I love autumn. I love the crisp air and falling leaves and sweaters and PUMPKINS. (I'm obsessed with pumpkins but that's for another post) I also love autumn foods: pumpkin pie (again with the pumpkin) apple crisp, baked ham and Mama's cranberry sauce. Actually, it's more of a compote because the cranberries stay whole. But it is delicious.

Mama's Orange Pear Cranberry Sauce

3 cups fresh cranberries (you can buy them by the bag in the grocery store)
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup orange juice
1 cup sugar
3 medium size ripe pears, diced

In a large saucepan, combine water, orange juice, sugar. Heat over medium heat until sugar completely dissolves.

This was before I added the orange juice.

Add cranberries, lower heat to medium low and allow to simmer for 10 -15 minutes. Cranberries will pop. When mixture is thickened and a little more than half the berries have popped, stir in the pears and let it cook 2 more minutes.

It looks so pretty and it makes the house smell lovely.

Allow to cool before storing it in your choice of containers. I bought a 12 pack of canning jars at the grocery store and used them. The cranberry sauce looks so pretty in them.

Mama bought a bunch of pretty regular glass containers and she gives them away to friends every autumn.

This cranberry sauce happens to go on everything. My brother eats it right out of the fridge and with every meal. Someone else I know puts it on homemade muffins or bread. It's that good. Provided, of course. that you like cranberries. If you don't, I can't help you.

Eggplant Rollatini

 
There really isn't any anecdote to this recipe, sorry. We had a friend over this weekend and I wanted to make something I hadn't made in quite a while. Since she likes eggplant also, I decided to make this one. It came out quite well, if I do say so myself, and as many things, was even better the next day for lunch. Enjoy.

Eggplant Rollatini

2 eggplants, peeled and sliced lengthwise, into 1/2 inch slices
salt and pepper
3/4 cup olive oil
16 oz ricotta cheese
1 egg
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella
3 tbsp grated Parmesan
20 basil leaves, thinly sliced or 1 tbsp dried basil
2 cups tomato sauce (recipe follows)

On a large baking sheet, arrange eggplant slices and sprinkle with salt. Set aside for 15 minutes. Rinse the eggplant and pat dry. Brush each slice with olive oil

Using a grill, or in my case the grill pan from Crate and Barrel, grill slices, about 4 minutes per side.

Spray a large casserole dish with olive oil and spread 1/2 cup of tomato sauce on the bottom. In a bowl, mix the ricotta, egg, mozzarella, Parmesan and basil. When the eggplant slices are cool enough to touch, place about a tbsp of cheese mixture at one end of each slice and roll. Place, seam side down, into the casserole dish. Continue with remaining eggplant slices. Spoon remaining tomato sauce over the eggplant and sprinkle with mozzarella and Parmesan cheese, if desired. At this point, decide whether you want to cook it now or cover and refrigerate it, for up to 8 hours)

Bake, uncovered, at 375 degrees for 15 - 20 minutes, until bubbly. Serve.

Tomato Sauce (adapted from a recipe from Giada De Laurentiis)

1/2 cup olive oil
2 smallish onions, chopped small
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 celery stalks, chopped small
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
2 32oz cans crushed tomatoes
2 dried bay leaves
1/2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

In a large pot over medium high heat, saute onions and garlic in the olive oil. When onions are translucent, add celery, salt and pepper. Saute until celery is soft. Add tomatoes, bay leaves, basil and red pepper flakes. Simmer, uncovered, for about an hour or until sauce is thickened. Remove bay leaves (hopefully you can find them)

Use in a recipe immediately, cover and refridgerate or freeze for a later date.

Apologies and Caffeine

Okay, I have to ask for everyone's forgiveness. I have been a terrible blogger this month. I submit my abject apology. Of course, I could use as my excuse the fact that my computer is completely full, which I had no idea could even happen, and I can't download any photos. I've been going through everything on my computer and deleting unnecessary stuff and Mike is going to fix it so that it, um...isn't full anymore. I'm not tech savvy; I break technology. I have no idea what the proper terminology is for a full and un-full computer, something to do with memory and gigabytes and hard drives. But since I have deleted a bunch of stuff off the computer, we're going to give this another shot and see if we can get the photos to download.

To get myself back on the blogging bandwagon, provided the computer cooperates, I'm going to do a post of something I've been making a lot of: COFFEE!!!

Hey it worked!!

Unlike my beloved parents who hate the stuff, we LOVE coffee. Of course, mine must be suitably sweetened and diluted with cream, but I do love it.

This household has been on a quest for a good cup of coffee for a long time, since we got married in fact. Even a tolerable cup of coffee would have been acceptable. Alas. It only took us about four years to discover it.

When we got married, we got a mildly expensive-looking, grown-up coffee pot which made fairly horrid coffee and was impossible to clean. So we finally chucked it and bought another cheaper one from Target. That one fared better than the expensive one, believe it or not. It made good coffee once in a while, passable coffee regularly, and undrinkable coffee occasionally. And then one day, it turned itself on and started brewing coffee even though the timer wasn't set and there was no water or coffee in it! We threw it out.

We then moved on to not drinking coffee at all but that didn't really work for us. Coffee seems to start the day on a good note. So during another trip to Target, we came across a Bodum French Press. Eureka!

Coffee Making Essentials

Let me tell you, this is simple, easy and cheap and it always makes great tasting coffee.

The french press was about $25 and we bought a small coffee grinder for about $15. For the coffee brand, I prefer to buy the whole bean Breakfast Blend variety of Green Mountain Coffee and grind it fresh every morning, which takes 10 seconds. I've tried other brands of coffee but Green Mountain is our favorite.

After the coffee is ground, dump the grinds into the bottom of the french press and heat up a pot of water. When the water is just before boiling, remove it from the heat and pour it into the french press. Put the top on it and leave it alone for seven to eight minutes. Press the plunger down and pour into mugs.

Mmm...

Voila. That took no time at all and it always tastes good, except for the occasional user error.

Best of all...The french press is dishwasher safe! It can't get any better than that.

Baked Potato Soup

Mmm, potatoes!

My niece loves this soup, especially the kind from Panera. Unfortunately, when she's craving it the most, they never have it. Figures.

I stumbled across this recipe in an old Cook's Illustrated and had to give it a whirl. I figured if it turned out good, I could give the recipe to her so she can have it whenever the craving hits her.

It was amazing. Even Mike, who as a rule doesn't like potato(I don't understand it but it's true), really liked it. It's actually pretty easy too. There are a lot of steps, but it is so worth it.

Baked Potato Soup
(adapted from Cook's Illustrated)

4 strips of bacon, chopped
3 lbs russet potatoes, washed and scrubbed
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tbsp flour
4 cups chicken broth
1 cup light cream
2 sprigs fresh thyme or 1/2 tsp dried thyme
4 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1 cup sour cream
3 scallions, sliced thin

In a Dutch oven or large stock pot, cook bacon until crispy. Using a vegetable peeler, peel potatoes in wide strips, reserve peels. Cut peeled potatoes into 3/4 inch pieces. Using a slotted spoon, remove bacon from pot and transfer to a paper towel lined plate. Add reserved potato skins to bacon fat and cook until crisp. Using a slotted spoon, remove the peels and transfer to the plate with the bacon.

Add onion to bacon fat and cook until golden. Stir in garlic and flour and cook about one minute. Gradually whisk in broth and cream. Stir in thyme and potatoes and bring to a boil on high heat. Reduce heat to medium low, cover pot and cook for 7 minutes or until potatoes are fork tender.

Discard thyme, if using fresh sprigs, and remove 2 cups of cooked potato to a separate bowl. Puree remaining soup, in batches in blender until smooth. Be careful, its very hot. Return pureed soup to pot and warm over medium heat. Remove from heat and stir in cheese until melted, then whisk in sour cream and add the reserved potatoes. Ladle soup into bowls and garnish with bacon, fried potato skins and scallions. Enjoy!

I forgot the scallions, oh well.

On a really cold winter day or the torrential rain we are currently enjoying, this would be the perfect meal.

If anybody tries this, I'd love to know what you all think.

Cupcakes and misadventures

 

This weekend was truly a weekend of misadventures! We had a going away party for very very dear friends and I decided to be quite ambitious and make 2 dozen cupcakes and the 6 inch cake that I saw on the Not So Humble Pie blog (because I aspire to be at her caliber of cooking one day).  I planned ahead the recipes: the usual Chocolate Cupcakes (recipe here) and for the 6 inch layer cake, red velvet with cream cheese frosting and of course the fondant.

The chocolate cupcakes came out perfect as usual. I needed a new frosting since my buttercream tends to melt at the slightest temperature above 60 degrees. So I made this new recipe I got from a friend that includes shortening to prevent the 'Wicked Witch of the West in Water' syndrome that my recipe has. After making it, well, it tasted good but I really felt like it needed something.

Buttercream Icing (that doesn't melt into oblivion)

1 cup shortening
1 cup butter, softened
7 cups powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla
4 oz raspberry jam (optional)

Combine all ingredients and mix well with an electric mixer. Tint to desired colour.
I tinted the icing a really pretty shade of raspberry pink and it just looked like it should taste raspberry pink too. So I dumped half a jar of raspberry jam into the frosting and voila! just enough raspberry-ness. I love when stuff like that happens.

 When the chocolate cupcakes were frosted and looked lovely, I moved onto the cake.
Again, the cake batter was remarkably easy to make. I used a recipe from an old issue of Cook's Illustrated magazine for both the cake batter and the frosting.

Red Velvet Cake
(adapted from Cook's Illustrated)

2 1/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 tbsp white vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp red food colouring
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour desired cake pans.

 
Whisk flour, baking soda and salt in  a bowl. In another bowl, whisk together buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla and eggs. In a small bowl, whisk together cocoa powder and food colouring.

With an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add a third of the flour mixture. Beat until incorporated. Add half of buttermilk mixture and beat until combined. Repeat with half of flour mixture and buttermilk mixture and then the rest of the flour mixture, beating well after each addition. Add cocoa mixture and beat until everything is well combined. Scrape into prepared pans and bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.

Cool the cakes in pans for 10 minutes then carefully turn onto a rack to cool completely.

Beautiful, rich colour!

While my little cakes were baking, I made the frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting
(adapted from Cook's Illustrated)

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
4 cups confectioner's sugar
16 oz cream cheese, softened and cut into 8 pieces
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt

In an electric mixer, combine butter and sugar and beat until fluffy. Add cream cheese and beat until well combined. Beat in vanilla and salt. 

I ended up with WAY too much! Even after I frosted the whole cake, layers and all, I still had a ton leftover. So.... I made more cupcakes. Before I get to that though, I'll keep going with the adorable little cake. It is so cute.

I split each cake in half with a knife, spread each half with cream cheese frosting and started layering. I applied a crumb coat of frosting to the entire cake, which turned out to be way to thick, but whatever, and then moved onto the fondant. A friend recommended that instead of making the fondant myself (an easy but time-consuming process),  I should buy the 'Duff's' fondant sold at Michael's Crafts Store. It's actually very tasty as opposed to the usual revolting tasting stuff that you can buy; I'd recommend it.

I was too busy assembling the cake to remember to take photos of assembling the cake, sorry.

Here, I hit my first snag. Due to the tiny-ness of my kitchen, I don't have ample counter space to roll out enough fondant to cover the cake. Due to the fact that I had been cooking all afternoon and my kitchen does not contain a window, it was very hot which makes fondant a bit sticky and overly soft. After much trial and error, I finally ended up rolling out the fondant on an unrimmed cookie sheet sprayed with oil and, holding my breath, lifted it off the cookie sheet and draped on the cake.

Oh they make it look so easy on TV. It's not, they lie. First, the fondant ripped in a number of places. Second, I used too much frosting for my crumb coat, which I said before, so the frosting was oozing a bit out the sides. Third and possibly because of second, the cake was not the smooth perfection it should have been. It was too late though. So I covered all the ripped sections with cute little flowers made of different coloured fondant and called it a day. Well, not exactly. I still made vanilla cupcakes that night.

I love the colour of this batter! It's so gorgeous.

I've been meaning to try out a few vanilla recipes and what a better time than 9 pm with the kitchen a sheer disaster. Yeah, why not. So here is where my second misadventure started. First, let me say the one should never, ever put two types of flour right next to each other unless they are easily distinguishable. Bread flour is not the same as all purpose flour despite looking EXACTLY the same. I ended up using two cups of bread flour and one cup of all-purpose flour in a recipe that actually calls for 3 cups of cake flour!

 
By the time, I realized my mistake it was too late so I baked them anyway. It turned out okay though. Mike said that they tasted like sugar cookies instead of cupcake but that's not bad, right? To lighten the density of the cupcakes, I used my filler tip to fill each cupcake with a dollop of strawberry jam.

Then I tinted the frosting a pretty purple and piped it onto each cupcake to cover the hole. With some sprinkles and a fondant heart, cute and perfect looking. I did whip the frosting into oblivion while trying to tint it the correct shade of purple so it was very light and fluffy, not a bad thing at all. Between the jam and the light frosting, they managed to balance the density of the cupcake, so that oops did manage to work itself out.

Vanilla Cupcakes

3 cups flour, all-purpose (or 2 of bread flour and 1 of all-purpose if you want the sugar cookie taste)
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter, room temperature
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350.

In a bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.

Beat sugar and butter in a mixer until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla. Alternate adding flour mixture and buttermilk to sugar mixture, beating well after each addition.

Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean.

And then comes the party, the third and final catastrophic misadventure...the chocolate cupcakes tipped in their carrier and the frosting fell off.

I ended up having to re-frost them with just a butter knife and cover them in sprinkles because there wasn't time to worry about re-piping the frosting into pretty shapes. I almost cried; it was terrible. Everybody thought they tasted good which is the point I suppose, but still...

Pop Tarts

Lost the camera so I had to use my phone.

The other day a close friend of mine told me how proud she was of herself for making homemade pop tarts out of pie crust dough and jam. They were so good in fact, that her 5 year old son told her that 'they were the best food in the entire world right now.'  He's right, they totally are! Remember how awesome pop tarts were for as a kid? Like eating dessert for breakfast and getting away with it? Homemade ones are even better. Granted, everything homemade is usually better than the boxed kind but seriously these were awesome and terribly easy.

 I imagine that if one were to make one's own pie crust, these would be even more amazing. As I was not in possession of a whole lot of time and not going to wait until I was (which would be never), I cheated and bought frozen pie crust. Oh well, still delicious. To balance out the cheating I did use some of my grandmother's homemade blackberry jam for the filling on some of the pop tarts. I did use two other store bought jams for filling the rest. Since Gram lives very far away, making the supply of homemade jam hard to come by, I wasn't about to use all of her jam in a recipe and not have any left for toast or bagels.


Homemade Pop Tarts

2 frozen pie crusts, thawed or homemade pie crust dough

1 jar of a favorite jam or in my case, three different kinds

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup confectioner's sugar

1 tbsp milk, plus more just in case

Roll out pie crust dough to about 1/8 inch thickness. With a knife or pizza cutter, slice the dough into desired rectangles or use a cookie cutter to cut out shapes. Spread one shape with jam leaving a generous space along the border of each. Top with a corresponding shape. With a fork, crimp the edges of the shapes together all the way around and poke a few holes in the top for steam to escape. Repeat with remaining shapes.

Arrange shapes on a cookie sheet and brush liberally with the beaten egg. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes or until golden brown and bubbly.

Meanwhile, whisk confectioner's sugar and milk together. If the icing is a little too dry add milk in teensy amounts until the desired consistency is reached. If it's too wet, add confectioner's sugar in teensy amounts.

When pop tarts have fully cooled, drizzle with icing and allow to harden. Store in an air tight container, that is if any make it into storage and you don't eat them all immediately. Ah, childhood.

Wedding Emergency Kit

 
You know those moments of, 'Oh, I wish I had...'? Those moments seem to become much more frequent when one is involved in a wedding day, theirs or anothers. I happen to have been involved in a number of them, my own included and there are a lot of, 'I chipped a nail.' 'I cut myself.' 'My dress is falling down.' 'I ripped a seam on my wedding dress!' etc, etc and so forth.

For all the weddings I've been remotely involved in (and to be honest, any wedding I've ever attended) I've always brought an extra handbag filled with essential emergency-solving gear: band-aids, anti-bacterial stuff, mints, duct tape, hair pins, Advil, super glue, etc. There was never any organization to this, I just threw anything I could think of into a bag and went to the wedding. Sometimes it came in handy, other times I never opened it. But I knew it was there, just in case.

Last weekend, one of my closest friends got married and I had the grand privilege of being in her wedding. She was one of the uber-prepared brides who has everything done days in advance and never needed any help from her bridesmaids. I felt rather lax, all I had done was help plan her shower and make a bunch of cupcakes. So in a fit of I-have-to-do-something-or-else, she asked me to put together a wedding emergency kit. I went completely overboard; I freely admit it.

I searched the Internet for lists of what people suggested that you have, added to it from my own knowledge and here it is: The Ultimate Wedding Day Emergency Kit

It was actually very handy to have. We ended up using quite a lot of the kit for varied issues. Fortunately, none fell into the category of catastrophic emergencies. It was a beautiful and terribly fun wedding. I loved it and I loved that I got to be a part of it.

Here's the list of what the kit contained:

BeautiControl Body Glue
Travel First Aid Kit
Sponge Bob Bandaids (because why not?)
Tide to Go Pen
Badger Balm Sore Muscle Rub
Badger Balm Sleep Balm
Badger Balm Headache Soother 
Badger Balm Anti-Bug Balm (yes, I love all badger balms)
Hair pins
Safety pins
Sewing thread in white and the colour of the bridesmaid dresses
Sewing needle
Anti-Bacterial stuff
Neosporen
Clear Nail Polish
Hairspray
Moist Wipes
Makeup Remover Pads
Advil
Sudafed
Hand Lotion
Lint Roller
Tweezers
Deodorant
Hair clips
Floss
Mirror
Scissors
Nail Clippers
Hair Ties
Gum
Q-tips
Chapstick
Tums
Nature Sunshine Digestive Tablets
Tissues
Comb
Talcum Powder
Visine
Panty Liners
Straws
and, the Bride's choice of candy