A lunch to honor the Fellowship Committee in charge of all the food happenings at our church.  Excellent cooks, tireless workers, always with a smiley face and a kind heart.  Ladies, you deserve a break today.  Let's have lunch!

We started off with champagne and sparkly lemonade.   Have you tried Sofia?  It's from Coppola Winery, and named after his daughter who directed one of my favorite movies, Marie Antoinette.  The winery is a very special one in California's wine country history and is housed in the historic old Inglenook Winery.  It's a beautiful setting plus it has a fascinating museum of memorabilia from all the great  Francis Ford Coppola movies.  Fabulous and a MUST see when you visit the wine country!

The roses below are from David Austin's English rose, Graham Thomas.  A beautiful true medium yellow and a prolific bloomer that grows into a very large bush.  Dainty flutes are from Napa Style and pewter tray is Donatello from Arte Italica.





The table was set with mother's Imperial Candlewick and my aunt's goblets.


The table cloth is ancient thick linen with a beautiful hem, purchased at a Stanford University rummage sale for a song.  Big score for my linen stash. 


All the roses on the sideboard and dining table are also from David Austin.  This one is The Pilgrim and is a pale lemon yellow and is as pretty as a petticoat.   From another very large and prolific bush in my garden.




The vases are from a collection of old vintage medicine bottles and canning jars that I found in my grandmother's basement.  The napkins are from my collection of Le Jacquard Francais.


On the menu was this beautiful first course from Ina Garten, tiny wee puff pastry goat cheese tarts.  Try it!  You must!  A seriously delicious little treat using frozen puff pastry which I love love love to use because it's so easy and using it makes a big splash!  Like you've really worked hard and been cooking all day.  But you haven't. 

I used fresh herbs plus beet and chard thinnings from the garden and made them smaller since it was lunch.  I have an abundance of radishes so they were included for some spicy crunch.


Here is a picture of them before they went into the oven, they tasted even prettier than they looked.


Main course was provided by Maryann, my sweet co-hostess.  You can find the recipe for her Curried Chicken Salad here, (oops, not yet) on our new cooking blog, Presbyterians Can Cook! moderated by moi.  It's in it's infancy, but we felt it was perhaps the easiest way to share our recipes with each other, but of course you are invited to the blog cooking party too!  I'd love you to follow us, we have some great cooks that will be sharing their favorite recipes.


Dessert was served in mother's vintage Rosenthal champagne coupes.   We still have 10 and I love to use them for dessert these days.  I crumbled brownies into the coupe, added fresh blackberries, topped with chantilly cream and raspberries.  Scrumptious.