January Dinner Club  W. I. T.

Upcoming Dinner:  January 8, 2013

Hostess:  Paprika

Ingredient:  Peanuts/Peanut Butter

December Dinner Outing

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures, but with the help of the Internet I improvised!!

Thanks to Couscous' diligent Groupon purchases, we were able to have our dinner outing at the Improv Comedy Club.

While it was a day that was difficult to find laughter, it was good to go out with friends and share some of life's best medicine so we didn't fall into the abyss of tying to understand something that is incomprehensible.

While Paprika couldn't join us, we had a stand-in, CW, who was a great addition to our group and was out for a extra special celebration - END OF FINALS WEEK AND SEMESTER!!!  WOO HOO!!

While the food wasn't the greatest, the drinks were tasty......

 

 The comedians were a riot....  

 

A healthier and much needed stress reliever for us all.

So another year of food, friends and fun wraps up!  We wish you all a 

and hope to see you in 2013!!

December Dinner Club

After a year of traveling from Italy to Ireland to Poland; challenging ourselves with how to break open a coconut, make our own pasta, and limit our dishes to specific letters and numbers; we scared ourselves at times with dishes concocted from oranges to strawberries to squash, but mostly we found comfort in sharing dinner with friends.  So now we take time out to recharge our creativity and enjoy a night out on the town!

End of the Season Farm Challenge:

Well, it was a fun and enjoyable season of farm goods from the Kretschmann Organic Farm and CSA!  We tried new things - some we enjoyed, some need some tweaking and some we will just forego our share and let someone else try to cook it!!

Here are some final dishes from the fall harvest!

Orange glazed acorn squash - Delish!

Slow-Cooker Baked Potato Soup - needs some tweaking!

Butternut Squash Gratin - passed the Thanksgiving Test!

Comfort Food!!

We all have those 'comfort foods', whether it's cold outside, we're feeling under the weather or it's just plain been a bad day.. these foods make us feel better. Sometimes it's a favorite childhood dish that mom made... sometimes it came from a box. Grapes hosting this month and we had a special guest... Olive. (and no one prepared from a box!!)

Dinner was served at a Thanksgiving ready table complete with Pilgrim hat/autumn leaf placesettings.

Our selections of wine included:

                                                              Zen of Zin                            Mementos                            

Gnarly Head                   

For our first course, Paprika brought her mom's "should-be-famous' dill dip with veggies and pretzels!

Grapes served individual Chicken Pot Pies... no worries.. she made Vegetarian pot pies for the veggie lovers!

Saucy made a delicious Mac & Cheese with a secret 'saucy' ingredient... butternut squash. YUM!

and for dessert, Couscous brought her childhood favorite cake.. a spice cake with a maple syrup icing.. Man, i NEED that recipe. It was simply delightful for dessert... and breakfast the next morning!! :)





Stayed tuned for our December dinner club info!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!!!!

November Dinner Club

Upcoming Dinner - November

Hostess - Grapes

Whatever You Want - Comfort Foods

October -Halloween Dinner Club

The girls had a ghoulish time at the October dinner club! Costumes were optional and boy were they clever!!!

Napkins and wine glasses adorned with, what else, but bats and spiders, oh my!

Killer Chef (awesome costume!) started us off with her appetizer of Coagulated Blood Dip with Finger Sticks! Yes, those are mozzarella eyeballs staring back at you!

 

Check out her theme plates (to prevent the blood dip from staining the good dishes!!)

Her wicked wine selection completed the dinner theme: Spellbound

Our mysterious "ghosts" of honor took on the terrifying task of prepping the main dish for the hostess.

The morbid main dish was a butternut squash and black bean chili served in pumpkin bowls.

Accompanied by coffin corn bread and hideous honey butter (the honey butter was actually fantastic, just trying to stay in the theme!)

And her clever costume for the evening......Count em out....Fifty shades of Grey! LOL

The ominous black cat carved up a creative side dish - a pepper pumpkin patch!!!  (Needed a picture of the front of the dish - each one had a jack-o-lantern face!!!)

Update!:  Picture of the jack-o-lantern faces!

She brought a spine-chilling wine - Vampire Blood!!

The invisible woman (was she there or wasn't she?) saved us creepy calories with her invisible dessert! Our blood-curdling chef though brought pumpkin spice candied pecans for an after-dinner treat.

The evening's ghastly guests did hair-raising job of creating Halloween theme dishes that no one was too scared to eat!

Weekly Farm Challenge 10/4/12 - 10/11/12 and 10/11/12 - 10/18/12

As the weather cools, the leaves change from green to red to orange, the fall bounty continues:  Tomatoes, peppers, kale, broccoli, green beans, red leaf lettuce, radishes, onions, corn (Yes, corn in October?!?!), parsley, apples, cauliflower, carrots, and eggplant.

A couple weeks of repeat dishes of salad, kale chips and salsa (for tailgating!)

.  

Couscous began using her veggie scraps (peels, green tops, etc.) and made her own veggie broth!

And using the veggie broth she made a corn, red pepper and potato chowder - Happy Fall!!

Weekly Farm Challenge 9/20/12 - 9/27/12 and 9/27/12 - 10/4/12

The fall veggies are coming in: tomatoes, peppers, spaghetti squash, basil, apples, zucchini, onion, swiss chard, eggplant, leaf lettuce, green beans, beets, yellow squash, garlic and butternut squash

Couscous vowed to make a dish with eggplant that Grapes would like and......she may have found a dish that passes the test!  Baba Ganoush!

 She also made salsa with the tomatoes, garlic, red pepper, and onion

Finally Couscous whipped up a batch of roasted butternut squash and shallot soup