Bon Appetit Cooking Club

Tuesday night was my cooking Club get together.  I love to cook!  Our club is called Bon Appetit and their are 5 of us.  They all have known each other and have some great stories about how they met. They are a fun bunch of Ladies and I love being apart of thier group.  We meet once a month and we cook out of the What Can I bring? Cookbook by Anne Byrn.  I got mine on Amazon.com.  This month I was to bring Soup/Veggie.  I made the Jackie's Potato Soup on page 76-77, Jeannine was our hostess and she made the Judy's Mom's Meat Loaf page 190-191.  Pam made The Old-Fashioned Macaroni Salad on page 142-143, Cathy made Suzanne's Guacamole page 8-9, and Jeanne made the Orange Marmalade Cake from page 353- 355

You can see it all here except for my soup.
Yep I forgot to take pictures of the table setting and of the food before we started digging into it.  But it is so good you just want to eat it.  Luckily there was still some meatloaf left in the dish when I remembered to take the picture.  Next time!!!! LOL

Here it is all on the plate.  It was so good.  The plates are from Butler's Pantry and the Bowls are from (wait for it) Ikea.  We all could not believe that the bowls were from Ikea.  Guess I better take a second look next time. You can see the cookbook that we are cooking out of this year.  We try to make every recipe in the book.  We have been cooking out of this one for some time now and we love it.  You should try it.

Here you can see the dessert all plated up.  Jeanne is new to our group and she has set the bar high. This dessert was AWESOME.  The frosting has Sour Cream in it.  It was so good not even crumbs were left on the plates.
Check out the little goody bags that Jeannine made filled sweet tart jelly beans.  She is such a crafty lady!

This is our hostess Jeannine what a fun lady she is and she is so creative too.  Can you see the place cards she made.  The table was so beautifully set and the center piece just made you smile.  Great food, great company, and a great time too.  Thanks ladies!

***Update on the Jackie's Potato Soup.  I made a double batch because I have been searching for the perfect Potato Soup for quite awhile now.  Every cookbook we cook out of I try the Potato Soup and every time I have not been impressed.  But this one was different.  By the next night the whole thing was gone.  That is a good sign since there are 7 of us and not everyone likes the same thing.  This one was a winner for sure. ***  
Don't tell them that it has carrots.  I grated them with my Kitchen Aid mixer attachment so it grated them very fine.  Love that!  I blended the flour and milk in my Vitamix (no lumps at all).  After mixing the flour mixture in with the soup. I took about 3 big ladles full of the soup mix with big chunks of Potatoes in it and placed them in the Vitamix and that blended it all up.  I placed that back in the soup.  That made it so creamy and thick.  I love, love my Kitchen Aid mixer and my Vitamix.  

Keep checking back.  I will add our cooking club each month to my blog.  Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Coffee Anyone

I made these a long time ago for a table that would have the Coffee Pots and Hot Water on them.   But with the holidays coming up I thought they might be fun to post now.
They are cut from the From My Kitchen Cricut cartridge.  I don't remember any of the sizes and the paper is from a retired paper pack.  When I saw the paper it made me think of the coffee pot from the 50's 60's with the Gold star burst on them (Not that I am dating my self or anything).  When I was asked to make something for the coffee table the paper popped into my head.  I just love when that happens!  The funny thing was shortly after putting them on the table and before most of the guest arrived the Coffee one was gone.  They looked everywhere but never found it.  I took it as a compliment that someone took it because they loved it and wanted to use it too.
Well here they are

I just folded a rectangle piece of paper in half for the tent. Then attach the pot and the words to the front.

The decaf is cut with individual letter (not sure which cart. I used for that). This was done years ago sorry.... From My Kitchen does not have Decaf on it but it should LOL. No one ever asks for my input on these things....

Well like I said with the Holiday's coming up I thought they might be of use to someone who wanted to make them too.

Let me know if you make them. I would love to see what you come up with too.