Look at my new toy--holds 7 quarts!It got a workout tonight. We invited a family of beautiful children and their charming parents to join us for dinner. In addition, our kids came home for the week--Yay! This qualifies as feeding a crowd, no? On its maiden voyage, the crock pot cooked a double batch of:Italian Bow Tie Supper For dessert:Pineapple Layer Cake I consider company [...]
We're talking chocolate tonight.We can start off with the recipe for CHOCOLATE-DATE-COCONUT CAKE.1 cup chopped dates1 cup hot water1 3/4 cup flour3 TB cocoa1 tsp. baking soda1 cup butter, softened1 cup sugar2 tsp. vanilla2 eggs6 oz. semisweet chocolate chips1/2 cup flaked coconutCover dates with water in small bowl; set aside. Stir together flour, cocoa and baking soda; set aside. cream butter, sugar and vanilla until [...]
The Tabernacle Choir visited us on Friday.They arrived in town a day early, which left them a few spare hours to visit "your beautiful city." Now this could just be a load of flattery; audiences eat that kind of thing up. How easy is it to say "your beautiful city" and "your wonderful museums"? You could talk that way about any city (except East St. [...]
The picture on the cover has all the dark tones of a portrait of royalty, the kind hanging along the main hallway of the palace. The man on the cover wears a coat that drapes to the floor. And a bonnet with a ruffled edge. And he's pregnant. Oh, oh, wait, that's not a man? It's a woman, the mistress of a Russian nobleman? Well, [...]
Winter has set in, as you know, and I'm dying to escape it, even if it's just in the pages of a book. Sadly, the books I have chosen lately were a pile of duds. So let's just dive in to the Finished Book Pile today and express our frustrations, OK? This pile of duds included Dangerous Laughter, a collection of short stories by [...]
OK, I'm pretty sure I'm the last person in the whole United States to read The Help by Kathryn Stockett. But just in case I'm not the last, let me tell you that you will, like about 12 million other people, enjoy reading about Minny, the big-mouth maid who gets fired for doing something Terrible/Awful to her employer. (The Terrible/Awful wasn't what I expected. It [...]
Today we feature my birthday dinner, which I cooked myself, not that I minded one little bit. We had:POTLUCK EGGS BENEDICT1 16-oz. can green beans3/4 cup margarine3/4 c. flour4 c. milk1 can (14 1/2 oz.) chicken broth1 lb. cubed cooked ham1 c. (4 oz.) shredded cheddar cheese8 hard-cooked eggs, sliced1/2 tsp. salt1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper10-12 biscuits, warmedMelt butter in saucepan; stir in flour until smooth. [...]
Ah, Memorial Day. Best one in a long time. Mercy introduced us to Bexley, where the streets are shady, the vast lawns are landscaped by skilled hands, the driveways are long, curving, bricked, and the houses -- excuse me -- the manors are dignified. At one of the larger ones, I expected Captain Von Trapp to pop around the corner and scowl at me. That [...]
