Louisville Hot Browns

We are printing and mailing lots of invitations for right now for Kentucky Derby parties on the first Saturday of May. With the beautiful early spring we are having, it seems like the perfect year to have a party in May.
Everyone immediately thinks of red roses and mint juleps for Kentucky Derby parties, but when you plan your menu, do you know that there is also a traditional sandwich? In the 1920's, chef Fred Schmidt at The Brown Hotel in Louisville created the Louisville Hot Brown sandwich for hotel guests. The recipe has been copied and altered and is now served at most Louisville restaurants and hotels. This is the original Brown Hotel recipe - it makes two whopper-size sandwiches and I'm sure you could downsize the portions and still make the hungriest guests happy. The photo above shows a slightly different version with the tomatoes sliced onto the sandwich and the bacon crumbled over the sandwich. Google Louisville Hot Browns, and there are lots of variations of this recipe available - all of them sound delicious!

The Legendary Hot Brown Recipe

Ingredients (Makes Two Hot Browns):

• 2 oz. Whole Butter
• 2 oz. All Purpose Flour
• 16 oz. Heavy Cream
• 1/2 Cup Pecorino Romano Cheese, Plus 1 Tablespoon for Garnish
• Salt & Pepper to Taste
• 14 oz. Sliced Roasted Turkey Breast
• 2 Slices of Texas Toast (Crust Trimmed)
• 4 slices of Crispy Bacon
• 2 Roma Tomatoes, Sliced in Half
• Paprika
• Parsley

In a two-quart saucepan, melt butter and slowly whisk in flour until combined and forms a thick paste (roux). Continue to cook roux for two minutes over medium-low heat, stirring frequently. Whisk heavy cream into the roux and cook over medium heat until the cream begins to simmer, about 2-3 minutes. Remove sauce from heat and slowly whisk in Pecorino Romano cheese until the Mornay sauce is smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste.
For each Hot Brown, place one slice of toast in an oven safe dish and cover with 7 ounces of turkey. Take the two halves of Roma tomato and set them alongside the base of turkey and toast. Next, pour one half of the Mornay sauce to completely cover the dish. Sprinkle with additional Pecorino Romano cheese. Place entire dish under a broiler until cheese begins to brown and bubble. Remove from broiler, cross two pieces of crispy bacon on top, sprinkle with paprika and parsley, and serve immediately.

You Can Vote!

Bella Figura recently made a very special offer to brides purchasing wedding invitations from their company. Brides who let Bella Figura know about their volunteer work and good deeds received 25 free invitations and the chance to become the top winner and receive 100 free invitations. You can vote for the bride whose good deed impresses you the most. I couldn't pick one - I thought they were all inspiring young women and are all winners.
Here are the top 5 finalists:
http://pinterest.com/letterpressed/do-good-in-march-finalists/

"We Danced All Night and Forgot to Eat!"

We hear this a lot - the bride and groom mixed and mingled and talked and danced and celebrated and did everything but eat dinner. And many brides and grooms are off having their wedding photos taken during the cocktail hour, so they miss all the hors d'oeuvres they carefully selected for their guests.

Caterers can pack a picnic dinner for the bride and groom to take to the hotel after the wedding reception ends. Everything from salad to dessert can be packed in little Mason jars or into a mini-suitcase. Or you could have fun finding the perfect licensed character lunchbox for your groom - what would that be?

Don't forget a bottle of the wine!

Boxed Mason jars dinner from Broich Catering & Events.
Suitcase dinner from Martha Stewart Weddings.

Posh Paper Pom Poms!

This is a fun year to be a paper store since so many of the latest decor trends incorporate paper. Paper pom poms and paper flowers and garlands are showing up everywhere. Look at how much fun they add to the decor for showers and weddings. We just got in a fantastic line of 15" pom poms in l2 luscious colors: white, ivory, pink, bubble gum, canteloupe, tangerine, lemonade, chartreuse, robin's egg, ice, purple and violet.

Other sizes and colors are available by special order. $5.00 each or $4.50 each if you order 24.

Embroidered Tablecloth Guest Book

I'll bet someone in every family has a drawerful of old embroidered tablecloths made by an aunt, a great-aunt or a grandmother. Like me - I have my mother's "bridge cloths" from the 40s and 50s, when ladies lunched and played bridge, and her flowery "tea cloths," which I guess were for occasions when only the ladies were invited. They are somewhat useless, but impossible to throw away.

I saw an idea where a family had every guest who came to their home over the holidays sign a tablecloth, their "Christmas cloth." The names were then covered with embroidery, and eventually the cloth was filled with the names of friends and relatives.

So, could one of these packed-away embroidered cloths come out of a drawer and become guest book for a wedding? Guests could write their names on the cloth (be sure to use a pen made for writing on fabric) and then you have the option of whether to later embroider over the names. Bring the cloth out in your home for special occasions and have new friends and family add their names to it and the cloth will become a sentimental keepsake for your family.

If you like the idea, but don't have family heirlooms, check out eBay - there were 1800 vintage embroidered cloths listed when I checked!

Vintage Book Placecards

Looking through wedding websites, I found this whimsical set of placecards on Intimate Weddings. The designer bought children's books at a thrift shop and cut interesting pictures from them to use on the placecards.
We find that a lot of brides and grooms don't want to do conventional placecards and table numbers - they want to do something different that relates to them and has more personality. I love the idea of using characters from favorite books or the covers of favorite childhood books on the placecards. You could pick a character or a title for each guest table, like Elinor from Sense and Sensibility, and Jules Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires.

Scan the picture, reduce to an appropriate size, and make enough copies for the number of placecards that will use that image. For the table number, you can use a blown-up version of the character or book cover, or you could place the actual book on the table.
Wouldn't this be an especially good idea if your wedding is at The George Peabody Library?
Another twist on the idea is to buy favorite children's books for each guest table, use the book jackets to scan and create your placecards and table numbers and then, after the wedding, donate the books to an organization that can use them for children.
If you decide to do a DIY project like this for your wedding, start early. You could find the books and set up the printing months in advance. Do the table number cards and the images for the placecards early, and then a week or so before the wedding you only have to add the names to the placecards. Or, bring it all in to us and we'll do the work.
Look for a post later showing how we used vintage Baltimore postcards to create placecards and table numbers.

Awwww, this is a sweet photo!

Love this photo of the bride and groom each holding a picture of their parents on their own wedding days. What a sentimental and perfect picture to have in your wedding album.
Photo from ebweddings.tumblr.com