Mother's Day Gift Ideas

Mother’s Day is approaching so we have put together some gift ideas to help kick start your thinking caps! Help mom build a chic patio experience for the upcoming Summer days, while compotes and canisters combined with pretty trays are a fun way to organize. Or, perhaps you just want to give her a little something to show how much you care. Take a look at our recommendations below and for even more ideas check out our Mother’s Day section on our website!

Calypso | Buon Gustaio

Les Bon Bons Compote | Alhambra | Filigree   

Sweet Nothings | Farm Belle Soap | Farm Belle Blue Ribbon Honey | Word Play | Alphabet Studio

R O S A N N A I N C . C O M

A Feast of Love

Our hearts are large. Soul mates and kindred spirits of all kinds enter our lives every day, and the day to celebrate them is coming soon: Valentine’s Day. Even if we don’t have a significant other, we’re all lovers in some way--of our friends, children, or family. This year on Valentine’s Day, honor the many lights that illuminate your life with a Feast of Love. 

Here are a few ideas to help you plan a celebratory meal overflowing with love.

-Find every dish, piece of flatware, candleholder, vase, napkin, and tablecloth in your house that’s pink, red, purple, or white. Create your tablescape from these assembled items. If you come up short, keep the color scheme in mind and poke around the house for vintage figurines, toys, objets d’art, and other unexpected items to help you fill out the aesthetic.

-Buy pink, purple, red, and white construction paper. Cut out hearts of all different sizes and scatter them down the center of the table. This effect looks especially striking against a clean, white tablecloth.

-Set a construction paper heart at each place setting. On each heart, write something that person brings to the table—something you love about him or her. It could be something like “You do pitch perfect impersonations,” or “Martha Stewart has nothing on you; you make the best upside down pineapple cake known to man,” or "When you’re around, everybody laughs themselves silly.” If you want, you can even make it a game—leave the name off the placecard and have each guest guess which card is meant for him or her.

-Pick a meal theme. Foods you loved as a child. Foods from famous love stories. Foods with love-related names. Or, maybe just make some food that everybody loves.

-Make sugar cookies for dessert (see recipe below). Instead of using Valentine’s Day-themed cookie cutters, find alphabet cookie cutters. Typically your local kitchen store is a good place to start. If not, try Sur La Table, Bed, Bath, and Beyond, or Fish’s Eddy if you’re in Manhattan. Cut out cookies in the shape of the initials of each guest, plate the cookies and serve with a scoop or two of delicious ice cream. Or, spell out a message of love in cookies on the cleared table or a banquet after the meal is over.

Valentine’s Day is a wonderful opportunity to spread love far and wide. Create a space for friends and family to share love on a grander scale than lover to lover. After all, there’s no such thing as too much love.  

Rosanna’s Sugar Cookie Recipe

Ingredients

2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup of sugar

2 tablespoons vanilla

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter

1 egg

red, pink, or purple sprinkles and silver or gold dragee balls optional

Instructions

1. Sift dry ingredients together.

2. Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and add the sugar.

3. Add the egg and vanilla to the creamed butter and sugar. Beat well.

4. Add the dry ingredients a little at a time and mix until well balanced.

5. Wrap the dough in cloth, pastry paper or aluminum foil. Chill for at least 30 minutes before rolling.

6. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

7. Grease one or two baking sheets and set aside.

8. Roll out 1/3 of the dough and cut with cookie cutters into desired shapes and letters.

9. Optional: Sprinkle the cut out cookies with of colored sugar crystals or decorate with candies.

10. Place cookies on baking sheets and bake for 10 minutes. Watch to make sure they don’t brown!

11. Remove the cookies from oven. Let cool for 5 minutes, then remove cookies from sheets with a wide spatula leave to cool on cookie racks.

   

www.rosannainc.com

Thoughts on Thanksgiving: Part 2

In response to the question

What do you think is the most important thing to put on a Thanksgiving table?  

I have two words: 

Fresh food.

At Thanksgiving especially, I strive to make sure everything on the table is homemade and make a point of using only natural ingredients. No margarine, no cranberry sauce in a can, and no instant gravy. This meal is as much about the time, effort, and love it takes to prepare as it is about the actual eating of it.

Growing up, I remember my grandmother made every single Thanksgiving dish from scratch. If you don’t know where to start with from-scratch cooking, you don’t have to look much farther than two generations back. Refer to old family recipes from your grandparents’ generation, before ready-made, instant food became widely available. During that era, there was nothing but homemade.

A Thanksgiving made with fresh ingredients from nature instead of from a can make for a meal that has something special. The extra effort and mindful attention to detail set this dinner apart from the everyday meals. The long hours in the kitchen are something to take pride in and to cherish. Cooking, after all, is one of the most basic and intuitive expressions of love.

This Thanksgiving, I encourage everyone to make their holidays as fresh as you can —

Not organic,

Not green,

Not eco-friendly,

just fresh.

www.rosannainc.com

You Are What You Eat

"Out Of The Kitchen, Onto The Couch," the feature story Michael Pollan wrote for The New York Times Magazine a few weeks ago got me thinking. The piece focuses on America’s increasing consumption of pre-made meals and a reliance on supermarket convenience food. The article emphasizes the fact that all over the country, American stoves are gathering dust and ovens are accumulating cobwebs.

On top of the most obvious disadvantages of consuming processed foods rife with preservatives, chemicals, and hormones, the decline of American cooking means something else. Because we are what we eat, in more ways than we know.

Think about what it takes to prepare a meal by hand: time, effort, patience, and care. All of these elements find their way into the food we make, especially if the meal is intended for people who mean something to us. It’s called cooking with love. Countless individuals have caught on to this phenomenon and transformed it into lovely works of art. I’m thinking of literature and films including Like Water for Chocolate, Ruth Reichl’s memoirs, Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me With Apples, the films  Babette’s Feast, Chocolat, and most recently, Julie and Julia. Even The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci includes a nod to food as love!

All of these pieces tell the same story. Food is an incredibly potent means to transmit beautiful sparks of humanity--passion, tenderness, care, pleasure, gratitude, and goodwill. It doesn’t get more direct than it does with food. You feel an emotion, infuse the food with that feeling, and then someone puts that food in their body! This knowledge alone is compelling enough to inspire me to close the computer, get off the couch, and start cooking. Right now.

www.rosannainc.com