My brides are getting older.  That’s not to say they’re aging– rather that my brides are more likely to be adults, with established careers, their own homes, chosen lifestyles, and a firm sense of their own particular preferences.  This makes it lots of fun for me, because I get to see the culmination of their search for The Perfect Dress.

We’ve ‘seen it all’ at Timberwolf Creek.  From gowns with eight foot trains, heavily encrusted with beading and embroidery, rivaling Britain’s royal weddings, to biker leathers and cowboy boots (on the bride).  All have been marvelous!  Once, the bride -this one actually was from Great Britain- packed her full length gown in a suitcase, and popped it out perfect and ready to go!  It was crushed taffeta and gorgeous.  An excellent plan.  And while we’ve had designer gowns that likely cost more than the event, several brides have bragged that they got their traditional white gowns from eBay, for a song.  So cost isn’t what determines what these women choose.

It’s the dream.  A wedding is a Dream Come True kind of day.  And the dress is just part of the experience.  It needs to be flattering and make her feel beautiful and confident.  For some, comfortable is a requirement.  For others, not so much.  Mostly, it needs to match up with her ideal.

And that doesn’t always include a big bow on the back.  Not to knock bows!  A sash on a wedding gown, with a perfectly tied bow, can be lovely.  It can be smaller than your hand, with the ties hanging loose, or a great big picture-perfect bow with the center knot smoothed and the ties twisted under so that it stays straight and pleated just so, or a softly tied bow that drapes loosely from a gentle knot.

For some women, though, bows were left behind with pigtails and dotting their i’s with hearts.  So, here they are, trying on wedding gowns in the quest for The Perfect Dress… and there it is…  Exactly the right fit.  Just the right style.  Perfect fabric and embellishment.  Maybe a bit of lace here, or embroidery there, or a pleat, or a smooth expanse of satin.  Precisely the right straps or sleeves.  Except… there’s this sash that ties in the back.

What to do?  You can loop it over once, in a half-knot, and let it hang.  Sometimes that looks nice.  Sometimes that looks like your bow came undone, or that you forgot to finish it.

Enter the Sash Pin.

This is an opportunity just waiting to shine.  The chance to really show off your creativity and individuality.  Maybe you’ll use your great grandmother’s antique brooch.  Or the pin your aunt wore when she eloped.  Or a diaper pin your mother saved with your baby things.  Your dad’s tie-tack.  Or maybe you’ll choose something that matches your colors – a fabric flower pin, or a brooch of colored beads.  Or a kilt pin.  Or a cameo.  Your Girl Scout trefoil pin.  I Like Ike.  Beam me up Scotty with a Star Trek pin.  Or anything from the millions of jeweled brooches you can find.  Glorious pearls and rhinestones – or diamonds and precious jewels – in every imaginable shape and color and size and style.

And suddenly, those sash ties are your chance to make a statement, and make The Perfect Dress uniquely yours.

Finally, a word to the ladies who like bows:  you can still have a sash pin.  Just put it smack in the middle of your bow!

.

At last year’s PAII convention, in Charleston, I took reams of notes.  Everything from wedding contracts to food photography was covered, including all the stuff you expect to see about internet presence and good website design and stain removal and breakfast recipes.  There was an astonishing amount of information – far more than I could absorb – and I’ve still only put about 20% into practice.  (Isn’t that always the way?)  So I really didn’t have an excuse to spend the thousands of dollars it would have cost to attend the conference this year.  Cardinal rule:  All Expenditures Must Be Justified.  And I couldn’t very well justify it as play time, since we just spent the first part of a week in New Orleans with a dozen of us, and then a bunch of us went sailing to the Caribbean.  Oh yes, I qualify for the ‘plays well with others’ t-shirt.

Lots of information from the conference is online for me, and we have friends/innkeepers in attendance who are coming to visit us when it’s over, and I’m sure they’ll be bubbling over with insights and new products from the vendor floor.  And still…  I am sooooooo jealous.  I want to hang out with my buds!  I want to take reams of notes!  I want to try new stuff!  I want to… um… sleep on substandard hotel sheets with flat pillows and get up predawn to drink hotel coffee with powdered creamer from a styrofoam cup and hike to the convention floor… no… wait…  (Oh baby, B&Bs have spoiled me rotten for the good stuff.)

[SIGH] Ok, that’s the stuff you put up with to go to the conference.  But it’s worth it.  It is.  And next year, I’ll be back at the PAII conference.

That is, unless I can get ten besties onto another cruise ship.

Now:  If only we could convince the cruise lines to make a wonderful breakfast…

.

________________________________________________________________________

I like my coffee hot.  Not mostly hot, or a little bit hot, or fairly hot.  Steaming, piping, right-from-the-pot hot.  Now, it takes me a while to drink a cup of coffee at my desk, sitting at this computer.  And I have a really good coffee warmer (which fits my new mug perfectly).  It keeps my coffee pretty hot.  (Sigh.)

Then one day, I asked Niles Deneen if I could order a few of those lids.  They came right away, and wow was I ever surprised!  I popped one of those babies on my hot coffee and twenty minutes later, I took a sip and it was still really hot!  Not a little, not mostly, not acceptably warm.  Well, honey, color me happy!

Larry actually lets his coffee cool a bit before he drinks it.  (Horrors!)  So he just rolls his eyes at my hot coffee nirvana.  That said, if you’re like me, you’ll want one for yourself.

Now, where was I?  Oh yes:  Ahhhhh….

Hand-thrown coffee mug, with lid, from Deneen Pottery

It’s sooo easy. And I just typed it up for Letitia – so, voila! If you’re using commercially frozen blueberries, you’ll need to rinse off the juice oryou’ll have grey food. The blueberries you had here were from my Uncle Carroll’s garden, and picks them “in the morning before the sun hits them” and then dries them on cookie sheets so that they are “neat”. Best when using commercial to tuck in the berries *after* pouring the egg/milk/sugar/spice mixture over the bread, the prevent them from smearing.

Berry White Chocolate Chapelure

Baker’s Joy cooking spray
4 slices of bread (approximate!)
2 croissants
1/4 cup berries (either frozen blueberries, or dried cranberries)
1/4 cup white chocolate chips
4 eggs (if using ‘medium’ eggs, you’ll need 5)
1 1/2 cups milk
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
dash of nutmeg, mace, cloves
maple syrup

Using individual ramekins, spray with cooking spray.

Into a big mixing bowl, cut leftover bread into cubes. Be careful not to ‘smoosh’ the bread. Use more than one kind of bread (French, sour dough, oatmeal). Tear the croissants. Toss the bread to mix it up. Distribute randomly into the dishes. You want the dishes to be over-full. Don’t press it down.

Tuck in frozen blueberries OR dried cranberries, and then add white chocolate chips.

Mix eggs and milk with brown sugar, spices and vanilla. Pour carefully over bread mixture.

Put in the refrigerator, and then cover lightly with plastic wrap -don’t tuck it in around the dishes, just lay it over the top. You want the bread to lift as it soaks up the eggs & milk. Refrigerate overnight.

In the morning, remove from the fridge, take off the plastic, and let stand at room temp for 20-30 minutes. Bake at 350 degrees about half an hour. It should be puffed and lightly browned. Serve with warm syrup on the side.

————
Note: this adapts really easily to whatever ingredients you have on hand. You’ll want two add-ins… like
–Raisin Walnut
–Blackberry Pecan
–Apple Cinnamon (peel the apples & chop small, sprinkle the top of the chapelure *lightly* with cinnamon and then sugar, before baking)
–Brown Sugar Peach (this is added AFTER the chapelure comes out of the fridge, in the morning – drain a can of peaches and toss with a little brown sugar and lay the fruit right on top of the bread, and then bake)

Well.  Ok.  It works for Larry, anyway.

When loud the bumble-bee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And Golden-Rod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;

When Gentians roll their fringes tight
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs
Without a sound of warning;

When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;

When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields, still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;

When springs run low, and on the brooks,
In idle golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;

When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers, hour by hour,
October’s bright blue weather.

O suns and skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October’s bright blue weather.

Sometimes, a poem just speaks to you.  This one, by Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885), could have been written just for me.

October at Timberwolf Creek

Put some pepperjack cheese grits on the side – preferably coarse stone-ground grits from a local mill (we like the one in Cherokee) and serve with raspberry-chocolate scones.

Now, we’ve been trying to come up with a name for this lovely meal for ages.  When my son, Nicholas, was cooking, he actually pioneered the dish and put the ingredients together to get just the right flavor.  (He also makes another version with diced portabello mushrooms in a creamy shallot sauce in place of the spinach -swoon!)  He dubbed them ‘Eggs Nicholas’.  Today, I was told that with the spinach filling in there, they should be called Green Eggs and Ham.

I’m thinking maybe Oeufs de Suess.