The Challenge: Entertaining

I am getting into week 4 of not going to the grocery store and as I had planned I have started having people over for dinner. That’s harder than just finding food for me. Friday night was a vegetarian meal that included 2 kinds of ravioli- cheese filled and pumpkin filled. One was serves with a red sauce- I did can a lot of tomatoes. The other was in pesto sauce- I also froze a lot of basil.  Saturday night’s dinner was in honor of Chinese New Year and included a vegetable soup with tofu. For this soup I did a pantry raid- using cans of baby corn, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts and straw mushrooms. I also made a chicken stir fry served with 2 different rices and spring rolls.  I had made lavender shortbread cookies and used them for dessert both nights. Guests brought wine so I did have plenty. Thanks Joe and Linda. 🙂

Here is the recipe for lavender shortbread cookies. Rather than make them the way I normally do I made a half batch, rolled tablespoons of dough and pressed them into small disks. Shortbread cookies don’t change size much when baking so I was able to put them pretty close together on the baking sheet. I then sprinkled them with a little extra sugar. I baked them at 325 for about 20-25 minutes- just until they started to brown on the bottom.

Lavender Shortbread

1 c. sugar, plus extra for sprinkling

2 c. butter or margarine

4 c. flour

2-3 T. lavender blossoms

Cream together the one-cup of sugar and butter. Stir in the flour and lavender blossoms. Press mixture in to a greased 9×13 inch-baking dish. Cut or score into small squares, or on the diagonal for diamond shapes. Sprinkle with extra sugar and bake in a preheated 300-degree oven for 50-55 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges. Re-cut the squares as soon as you remove the shortbread from the oven. Cool before removing from pan. Make about 100 small squares.