Tea for 24

Wednesday evening a friend and I hosted a shower for Shannon, who is getting married in just a few weeks! My mom came over Wednesday this week, and we set to work on the preprations.

First there was the homemade lemon curd, which was so wonderful! It brought back lots of memories, and made me promise myself to make this before another 5 years passes.




Then came the scones: cranberry orange scones, lemon currant scones, and orange wholewheat scones:
Emily came home the night before with flowers and Mom set to work to put something together:



Voila! The next time I came in the kitchen, here they were!


I do think tulips are such an artistic flower! All you have to do is stick them in a vase and they arrange themselves!



Now for setting the table. Here are some of the finished scones:

My friend, Anne, arrived with the rest of the food -- a tower of fruit and an incredible chocolate cake:
We had raspberry jam, lemon curd, and "clotted" cream with the scones:



Shortly after 7, the living room was buzzing with conversation.


After our little "program" it was time to have tea! (I also baked some brie in the oven with various toppings: rasberry/gooseberry, peach chutney, and brown sugar pecan)

Everyone got to choose a teacup and either Irish Breakfast, Earl Grey, Vanilla Black, or Peach Herbal tea.And here is the Bride during the "interview" part of the program:
Everyone enjoying the lovely food!
And more flowers -- they were so pretty!


And, you may ask, what were my bunnies up to while we were having the tea party? Michael took them out to dinner at Fazoli's (I don't think they've ever been there before). They LOVED it and had such a good time! Then they went to the library for a chance to read and play on the computers.

And now it is all a happy memory.

Foodie Thoughts

I've been mulling over a foodie post. Food is something I get excited about, bored about, frustrated about, etc. It's exciting when I'm inspired, feel energetic or have a real appetite for something we actually have in the house. Often I find myself getting bored or frustrated when it comes time to eat something and my options are so narrow. Same old, same old....

I've always considered my diet to be "healthy", but in recent months we've turned up the notch to make things even healthier. I'm finding that my health seems to be much better when my diet is very strict and regulated. That's where the boring and frustrating comes in.

It takes time to make healthy food interesting, appetizing, and exciting. I remember a Korean friend asking me how long I spent making dinner each night. 30 minutes was my reply. It took her on average 2 hours each evening -- she had to chop up numerous vegetables into tiny little piles, make soup stock, steam rice, make a rice drink, etc. etc. I'm trying to get myself to come to grips with the fact that good eating takes time.

And then there's the whole struggle of trying to get 5 servings of fruit and veg into each of us every day! For our household of 7, that's 245 servings of fruit and veg that I should be buying at the grocery store every week. Somehow I'm thinking I'm not making that goal, although I'm trying hard.

Anyway, here's a few pictures from some recent cooking. Some days when I have lots of energy I'm excited about good food, and other days (not pictured) it's just food. :)

Here's a pot of Scotch Broth I made with some lamb stock and meat leftover from Easter. It was lovely -- with onion, carrots, celery, kale and barley.

I was craving a good roasted chicken this past week and so I decided to make one for Sunday. I love the smell of the chicken roasting, the onion, rosemary, sage, and thyme creating an irresistible aroma. And the gravy is just about as good as the chicken, all lovely and brown and plenty enough to pour over baked potatoes.

All the cookbooks rave about how simple it is to roast a chicken. In fact, they say, can anything be simpler? Well, it may be easy to roast a chicken, but, as evidenced below, it's not easy to clean up the aftermath! I don't know why, but it seems to take me an enormous amount of pots and pans, roasters and utensils to put a roast chicken dinner on the table. No wonder I only do this once in awhile!

And then, after all that work, here's the response: (well, actually, this is the response we get at every dinner table)
It was refreshment night at church Sunday so I decided to make some quiches.
Some lovely onions and mushrooms getting ready for the quiches:
I'm trying to do better about salads -- they are one of my least favorite things to make. This must be due to the time it takes to wash and chop up all the ingredients. I usually "cheat" and buy bags of spinach which can just be dumped into a bowl. Here are some of my recent variations:

Spinach with grapefruit and sliced almonds (dressing of grapefruit juice, canola oil, salt and pepper)

Spinach with oranges and sliced almonds (dressing of orange juice, canola oil, salt and pepper)
Spinach with apples and almonds (dressing of lemon juice, canola oil, salt and pepper)

"Plate Salad" -- cut up tomatoes, avacados, cucumbers, spinach leaves, olives and cilantroI made some yummy all wholewheat bran muffins to go with our Scotch Broth.
I decided to bring a pie to church as well, since I had a bunch of "rotten" (but not literally) apples that could only be cooked. Apple pie is so comforting -- I love the smell of cinnamon and lemon juice when you mix the filling, and then the aroma of it all baking together.
Confession: pie crust is about the only thing that I haven't gone "whole wheat" on. But, seeing as I rarely make pies, and when I do, they are usually sugar-free too, I haven't worried about it yet.

The week seems to be going by quickly already. We are still enjoying Spring! Yeah! Rachel treated us to a tea party today as part of her Rosebuds projects. I'll post pictures sometime soon.

Relieved

I am very relieved to have the taxes over with! Yeah! Now I can allow something else to occupy my evenings and my brain. :)

We celebrated Michael's birthday earlier this week since he was away on his actual birthday. My grandmother, then my mom, and now I, have a tradition of decorating the birthday table with things from around the house that have to do with the birthday person. This year the kids asked if they could decorate the table for Dad -- they decided tools should be the theme. :)

Michael's mom often made him "Mexican Casserole" for his birthday, so that's what we had this year.
Rachel made a little cheesecake for dessert, since that is one of Michael's favorites.

And then there were cards and presents to open.
And one little boy who enjoyed his piece of cheesecake very, very much!

Pictures from Iowa

Here are some pictures from Michael and Rachel's trip to Iowa. They went out to attend the ordination service for a friend and former elder. They had a wonderful time, and Rachel didn't want to leave! Here she is with one of the new babies in the church:
Iowa is farming country and Michael and Rachel visited a farm belonging to members of the congregation they visited. Here's Rachel feeding a lamb (this picture made me really wish I had been able to be there too! I just love farms -- probably because I don't have to do all the hard work everyday)
And then Rachel fed the calf:
Michael came home with lots of stories of the wonderful home-cooking they have out in Iowa! He said I wouldn't definately like it out there! I'm going to have to visit! Michael's birthday was Sunday, and friends fixed a cake for him as part of the meal after the morning church service. Rachel made sure to put 3 candles on one side and 7 on the other.
And here's the birthday boy, with a tiny glimpse behind him of the delicious food he's been talking about.
Now I'm off to take another look at our taxes. I need to get it finished up....but I certainly would rather be reading in bed. :)

Visit to Grandpa and Grandma's

After church on Sunday the kids and I and Emily went over to my parents for the afternoon. We had a lovely time and it was nice to walk around and see what mom had sitting here and there:

a few lovely plants blooming in the front window

a very excited dog who tried to convince Andrew and James that they would make perfect playmates. Unfortunately, Andrew and James weren't convinced. Instead, they were convinced they better steer clear of Carlie. (Advice to Carlie: try the slow and easy method next time)

Mom and Dad are in the middle of kitchen renovations just now. So, they have a temporary kitchen in the mud room. I told mom she should write a series of blog entries on "Advice to Kitchen-Less Cooks". Mom gets creative with her toaster oven, electric frying pan, camp stove,

electric kettle, crockpot, rice cooker and microwave. I watched in amazement as mom cooked spaghetti in the rice cooker! I've done oatmeal, but hadn't tried spaghetti. Dad heats milk for making yogurt in the rice cooker too! I'm beginning to think if you were in serious conditions maybe a rice cooker is all you need!
A few more still lifes tucked in various corners -- the growing onion
a cute little bird that is waiting to be painted
and a pretty scene centered around teatime.

Baby Cakes needed a little TLC from Grandma after his nap. Grandma's usually do a good job of that.
Grandpa kept Andrew busy in the garage where they were making a new wing for the "flying duck" who lost his wing in a storm last year.
Mom's violets are doing wonderfully (her secret -- banishing them to the back corner of the garden last year and leaving them to brave summer storms on their own before taking pity and returning them to the living room)
Of course we had to have tea (several rounds of it in fact).
Mom has plenty to choose from!

The travellers are back! It sounds like Rachel had an incredible time. I have a few pictures to post next time of her visiting the farm.