We’d love to send some chocolate your way. Use coupon code tickettoship now through next Thursday and we’ll cover shipping to anywhere in the US on orders of $18 or more.
And if you’re around tomorrow, Tuesday, between 9 and 1 PST, stop by the Daily Grommet to see a little video the Grommet put together for us and to chat with me on the message borad. I’ll be waiting!
Happy <3 day.
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I just wanted to share a few ideas from the archives for getting lovey dovey this Valentines.
Wear your love,
or write about it on a macaron,
or on a cake.
p.s. or see nine other places to proclaim your love right here.
Speaking of cake, this flourless chocolate cake is an all time favorite.
Or if you’re really feeling ambitious and try a souffle or maybe chocolate mousse.
Or make something fun for the kids.
or doodle something sweet for a favorite teacher.
or check out a couple, free classroom valentine printables.
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Just wanted to let you know, as part of our big birthday bash, we have a fun offer going today only in the shop. Buy one of our Valentine two-packs (i love how they turned out, aren’t they sweet?) and get the second for $2. Just enter coupon code 2tuesday. You can check off a few teacher valentines or have a little something for yourself and a little something for someone who needs something cozy.
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Andrea and I have decided,
since it is our birthday week at the Ticket Kitchen,
we are going to have a week-long party.
We’d love for you to come party with us. Stop by our facebook page to check out what we have going on each day. Giveaways and deals ga-lore.
We’re starting today with a little something called
pin it to win it.
We’ll be giving away a Hot Chocolate Entertainment Pack to a lucky winner. Here’s how it works.
step 1. Do you already have a pinterest account? (If so, good. If you are like me and Andrea, you are probably spending way too much time pinning your heart out. If not, sign up at pinterest.com. And then come see me and we can be pinterest friends!)
step 2. Go to our Ticket Photo Blog and choose a pic or two that is your favorite. Pin them. On Wednesday we’ll choose one lucky pinner at random. Good luck! And don’t be a stranger, come see us on facebook and say hello.
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Hello everyone. How was your weekend? I hope it was wonderful. Ours was low-key, and we had our own little family dinner theater to watch Martin Luther King Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial 49 years ago. I am moved watching that every time.
It is so hard for me to believe it, but this week my little chocolate shop will turn one year old.
Someday I would like to sit down and tell you all about it. Give you my take on opening up a shop. But for today, there is really only one thing I’m thinking about as I look back on the last year.
I just wanting to say thank you. Thank you to all of you who have supported my S-I-L and I during this unforgettable year.
Thank you for your orders, for your words of support on our facebook page, for all our taste testers and for friends new and old who have called us up just to give us words of support. You all have been my favorite part of this crazy ride.
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I just wanted to share a little something we have been mailing out for a couple of birthdays this winter and will be mailing as a few simple valentines. This time of year, there’s nothing like the gift of soft supple lips.
***
and incase you’d like to see a little more, here is my favorite fun mail inspiration from the archives
A Wreath and Twinkly Lights | A Disguise | School Supplies | A Pair of Flip Flops | A Big Ball | Plastic Eggs 1 and 2 | Silly Putty |Shovel & a Bucket | Ribbon Sticks | Bubblewrap Hopscotch | Fan Mail | Waterbottle Care Package | Bouncy Balls | Sticky Notes | Jr Mints | Frisbee | Mini Banner and Mini m&ms
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Hello there. How were your holidays? Has your new year started off the way you wanted it to? I hope so. The new year has put me in a major organizing spree. I love starting fresh. More on that later.
For today, you can find me over at Blogstar, an amazing resource and blog of superwoman Sarah Bryden Brown (long-time publishing pro and author who has put together must. read. books by favorite bloggers). I am bearing my soul about what a complete hopeless introvert I am, and just what that has been like in my blogging life. I hope you’ll stop by!
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Today I’m over Say Yes to Hoboken sharing a how-to for making some cozy, upcycled holiday ornaments. I’d love for you to stop by and see me there, and while you’re at it, do not miss Liz’s latest holiday projects. Her not one, not two, but three gold dipped projects have to be all time favorites. And this holiday project of hers gets me all weepy just reading it.
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If you happen to be watching the Today show this morning, keep an eye out for our Ticket Chocolate. eek! In the meantime we will be here trying to remain calm. And using our best elf packing skills to mail out some chocolate.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
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We know someone who is going to need a few festive decorations in her college apartment while she is slogging through finals, so we decided we’d better drop a some the mail.
It just so happens that a set of 100 holiday lights weighs in at just under 13 ounces. Lucky for us. So we were able to stick on a few cheery stamps and drop that string of lights in a big blue mailbox.
We also picked up a $3 straw wreath-form, which is perfect for wrapping in tinsel. That weighed about the same, so in the mailbox it went. It just fit.
Followed by a string of tinsel, of course.
Photo credits for all post office shots go to my lovely mother. Who came visiting and offered to come along to the post office and snap pictures. We ended up having a great conversation with a pair of English women, who got in their car, then got back out to find out what we could possibly be doing. Which it turns out is a pretty good way to start a conversation.
Happy holidays, everyone.
***
and incase you’d like to see a little more, here is my favorite fun mail inspiration from the archives
A Disguise | School Supplies | A Pair of Flip Flops | A Big Ball | Plastic Eggs 1 and 2 | Silly Putty |Shovel & a Bucket | Ribbon Sticks | Bubblewrap Hopscotch | Fan Mail | Waterbottle Care Package | Bouncy Balls | Sticky Notes | Jr Mints | Frisbee | Mini Banner and Mini m&ms
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It has been almost a year since my sister-in-law and I opened the doors to our chocolate shop, and almost a year and a half since we first came up with this crazy idea.
Since then it has been a fun, wild ride.
We’ve found ourselves driving around the bay area with our minivans packed to rear-view-mirror-level with chocolate to deliver, we’ve learned how to mail chocolate to Florida in September, we’ve tasted hundreds of blends of hot chocolate, and then tasted them again, and then made our friends taste them, and we’ve made new friends with a whole lot of very awesome customers and shop owners and other people.
But we are ready to share the fun.
and the work : )
We are ready to expand Team Ticket.
We would love to bring on a few new willing women or men to join us on this adventure of ours. What will these women and men do, you ask? We don’t exactly know. We know they will probably work from home. But that’s about it. That’s where you come in.
We’d love to bring on some helpers, perhaps this January or maybe this August 2012. We know we want a few chocolate lovers to help us peddle Ticket Chocolate to smart little cafes and independent grocers and the like. And we know we would adore someone very organized and willing to help us keep up to date on our stock, or we might even like help from someone who is very serious in the kitchen to help us source ingredients.
But we really want to shape the positions according to who might like to join us and what they can bring to the table or fit in their lives. So if you have a moment and care to apply, we’d love to meet you.
Just click on this link and complete the survey.
And if we don’t get back to you in a flash, or even before Christmas, don’t worry. We are probably zipping around delivering chocolate. Or fitting in a little last-minute Christmas crafting and shopping. But we will read every application and be in touch either this January or this summer.
Thanks for considering.
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I have some serious eye candy to share with you today.
The forever talented Paula of Frog Prince Paperie put together a wintery and warm hot chocolate bar featuring our Hot Chocolate Ticket Sticks.
and a lot of other tempting goodies.
Don’t you love those “haute cocoa” labels? You can find them in Paula’s shop, along with every other completely beautiful tag and label you’ll need for an instant party.
Be sure to check out the full shoot over at Amy Atlas Events, and don’t miss the Frog Prince Paperie blog if you’d like to see more of Paula’s work. It is going to make you want to party.
Photography by John McLaughin Photography.
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I am over on Kirtsy today sharing a favorite DIY stocking stuffer, in a slideshow curated by the lovely Sarah Bryden-Brown. She’s put together a great line-up of stocking stuffers. And the good news and the bad news is that I am now dying to make every one of them. It is really a great roundup, you must see for yourself.
And, while you’re working on your holiday gift lists, here are a few fun teacher gift ideas from the archives. This one is still an all time favorite, I like to gift it with a gift card, for somewhere with yummy food or good reads.
And while I’m on the topic if DIY, did you see this art-by-mail project? I love the results they’ve already posted and am so curious to see more. And it’s for a great cause.
I hope your week starts out great! I have hopes of sending out a little happy mail of my own this week, and will be back to share all the details soon.
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A few years back I picked up this book
I adore much about this little volume.
And speaking of being a grown up, I also enjoyed reading that there is another full-grown woman who has a terrible time at trying to commit to a good purse. Thank you, Nora.
But back to the cooking.
One part of the book stuck in my mind word for word, and I was immediately sure I’d just been let into a big secret of being a proper grown up, and a charming hostess. The kind of hostess everyone talks about, no, writes books about after leaving the party.
This big secret is what Nora calles the rule of four.
“The most important thing I learned from Lee was something I call the Rule of Four. Most people serve three things for dinner—some sort of meat, some sort of starch, and some sort of vegetable— but Lee always served four. And the fourth thing was always unexpected, like those crab apples [more on this in a sec]. A casserole of lima beans and pears cooked for hours with brown sugar and molasses. Peaches with cayenne pepper. Sliced tomatoes with honey. Biscuits. Savory bread pudding. Spoon bread. Whatever it was, that fourth thing seemed to have an almost magical effect on the eating process. You never got tired of the food because there was always another taste on the plate to match it and contradict it.”
[p. 25, I Feel Bad About My Neck]
Brilliance, right? I am a sucker for a good, classic recipe, well made. Serving a few classics and then adding something magical? so so brilliant.
And who is Lee? this friend and host who served one magical simple meal another? It is Lee Bailey, who has written cookbooks I am going to need to own some day soon, with titles like Cooking for Friends
I love having friends who are great cooks (but I have to admit that none of them have written their own cooking volumes, yet) and adore picking up recipes and little tips from my cooking friends. And I am now adding Nora Ephron and Lee Bailey to that list.
So just to aid in my imagination that I am BFFs with Mr. Bailey and Ms. Ephron, and was peeking over Lee’s shoulders as he cooked, I decided to cook up Lee’s first meal for Nora.
“And then dinner was served. Pork chops, grits, collard greens, and a dish of tiny baked crab apples. It was delicious. It was so straightforward and plain and honest and at the same time so playful. Those crab apples!”
[p. 25]
Incase you are as totally inspired by Mr. Bailey as I am, I’ll add the particulars below incase you’d like to give it a whirl.
I’ll share in order of how you’d need to prepare for a dinner party, incase you want to try this out on some friends. The whole shebang is pretty simple, though your are going to need to get your oven going and a few burners on your stove.
Baked Crab Apples
We’ll start with the star of the show. Those crab apples. Crab apples come and go at my grocery store during the fall, so call before you shop. And if you have lady apples available, they’re just as small but more sweet than tart. I started with this recipe I’d seen a year or two ago and adjusted.
12 crab apples (three or four per guest is plenty)
3 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temp
1 cup sugar
Preheat your oven to 275. Smear each apple with butter, either by using a paper towel or doing it corn-on-the-cob style, and then roll in the sugar. Place in a baking pan and bake for up to an hour, when apples begin to look browner instead of pink, but while they still are a bit firm and before they wrinkle.
Now won’t those darling apples impress your dinner guests? They are perfect for eating with a fork and knife, or by hand. And you’ll have more time for conversation since they don’t go down as fast as applesauce.
Classic Grits
Now it’s time to get out a couple sauce pans. You might want to start the water boiling for the greens at the same time you start the grits. And as for the grits, I love this recipe from my man Alton Brown.
2 cups water
2 cups milk
1 tsp kosher salt
1 cup stone ground cornmeal (i like course ground yellow or white)
4 tbsp unsalted butter
4 oz sharp cheddar, shredded OR 3 Tbs bacon fat (optional, depending on if you want to impress your guests or be healthy)
Bring water, milk, and salt to a boil. Reduce heat to low. Slowly stir in cornmeal so it doesn’t clump, I use a whisk. Allow to cook on low for 20-25 minutes, stirring as constantly as possible, every two minutes if you can manage, until creamy and oatmealy but not too solid. Slowly stir in butter, add any additional salt you like to taste, and if you like, stir in bacon fat or slowly stir cheddar an ounce or two at a time so it fully combines.
Sauteed Garlic Collard Greens
I love the melt in your mouth collard greens, boiled for an hour with a couple ham hocks. But I also love the sauteed version, which leaves them with a little more zing.
2 bunches collard greens
2 tbsp butter
1 clove garlic, minced
Bring a pot of water to a boil. Meanwhile, cut the center stem from your collard greens and discard. Chop greens into large pieces, then boil for about 7 minutes, until they are wilted but still hold a little shape, then drain. Meanwhile, heat your pan for saute-ing to medium high. Melt butter, then toss in garlic and toast for a minute or two, and finally, toss in your greens and saute until they have just a little but of a brown fond on them.
Is it strange that I am completely craving collard greens right now?
Simple Porkchops
And the final piece, the chops. Pork chops are so good on their own, I like to keep them simple.
4 good quality chops
fresh thyme
1 Tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
Preheat your pan to medium high, pat chops dry with paper towels. Sprinkle chops with thyme and newly ground sea salt and black pepper. Add oil to pan, and saute. I usually saute for about six minutes on each side to get a nice caramelized chop, then reduce heat to medium until the chops are cooked through.
And now,
if any of you are still reading after that very lengthy post of me gushing over food,
I need to tell you that I am a huge fan of Southern fare. So if any of you are southern cooks, lets be friends! I would love hearing a thing or two about what you cook up.
And southern or not, what would your magical dish be?
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