I’ve realized that when I host a party, I am really bad at taking pictures of it.  I need to start hiring a photographer to take pictures of parties when I host (Thanksgiving was another blogger photo failure).  Oh well!

Here’s the only picture of the party:

That’s me standing in front of a table FULL of amazing and delicious looking cookies and bars and other goodies.  My friends are fantastic bakers and everybody brought something made with love.

And I don’t love the way I look in the picture above, but I’m posting it anyway.  I am in control of my appearance and I am not hiding.  I look like I am having FUN and just because I’ve gained a few pounds doesn’t mean I should be ashamed and hide.  Right?  *sobs into table of delicious cookies*

Okay, how does the cookie exchange party work?

Basically:

I invited about 20 women (evite), probably a dozen showed up.  I told everybody to bring 4 dozen cookies and copies of the recipe.  Some people brought a few more, some probably brought a few less, all in all there were TONS of cookies.  I provided some ziplock bags and wax paper, some people brought empty containers (I think I forgot to remind people to do this, but most did anyway.)

Since everybody knew ME but not everybody knew each other (most did, but not all) we went around the room, introduced ourselves, everybody told how they knew me, and also about their cookie recipe, or recipes.  After that, it was time to swap!  Basically everybody just took a few of each recipe until all the cookies were gone.  I had to chastise a few people to take more cookies.  It was a cookie swap, not a cookie dump!

I’ve read stuff online (on how to throw a cookie swap party) that suggests some people are a lot less generous—swaps that say to bring 10 dozen, all parceled out so nobody takes too many (or too few?).  Or that some people are less creative—I read something that suggested you want to make sure everybody doesn’t just bring chocolate chip.  Um, as far as my friends are concerned, getting together is an excuse to show off our culinary talents!  NO worries about five chocolate chip recipes.

We had some people with allergies in their families: I made little signs and divided up the table into various items: containing nuts, containing almonds, that kind of thing. It’s easy to tell when people remember to bring the recipe, but I’ve found that few bother with this, but you can always ask.

I also like to serve drinks and savory snacks.  I made Hot Apple Cider, Poinsettias (Cranberry juice, sparkling wine, triple sec) and had store bought Eggnog available.

I made small holes in an orange with a toothpick and then filled those holes with whole cloves.

Then I took a jug of apple cider, poured it into my crockpot, added the orange and several cinnamon sticks and put it on low for several hours.  It was delicious, with or without caramel vodka!

I also made my “famous” cream cheese and olive penguins and Alton Brown’s Spinach Artichoke Dip. (I used canned artichokes though, and it tasted GREAT.)

 

I’ll have to do a “how to make penguins” post one of these days, with step by step directions 😉

The party was a grand success, I would say.  It was my fourth year of throwing it and this was the biggest one yet.  I invited more people than before since I knew our new house was better suited to entertaining, but we still completely filled the table with food, even though it was probably three times as big as my old table!

(I made Coconut Lime Sugar Cookies which I already blogged about—not to brag but they are delicious.)

Since one person asked, I thought I’d share my grandmother’s recipe for Sour Cream Apple Pie.  I’m making one of these tomorrow and can’t wait (I like to lick the bowl after I make the sour cream mixture.  This is why I’m fat.) I don’t think I’ve ever had one made BY my grandmother but it is from the recipe box and it’s just delicious.  You should probably add it to your menu.

Ingredients:

2 eggs

1 cup sour cream

1 cup sugar

6 Tbsp flour, divided

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp salt

3 cups chopped peeled cooking apples

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

3 Tbsp cold butter or margarine

1 pie crust—8 to 10 inches

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs.  Add the sour cream.  Stir in the sugar, 2 Tbsp of the flour, vanilla, and salt—mix well.  Stir in the apples.  Pour into a pie crust.  Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes. 

Meanwhile, make the topping: combine brown sugar and the remaining 4 Tbsp of flour; cut in butter until mixture is crumbly.  Sprinkle over the top of the pie.  Return to the oven for 20-25 minutes or until the filling is set. 

Cool completely on a wire rack.  Serve right away,  or cover and refrigerate.

Not pretty, but delicious!

I’ve probably said this before, but I love this part of Downton Abbey.  “What is a weekend?”  For me though, it’s the opposite—”regular” folks have weekends off but I just keep on working.  Or start, depending.

That said, things haven’t been that busy, but yesterday was pretty fun.  I started the day reading some violin/piano sonatas with a friend (and mother of my horse head wearing student, ha!), and then we went to lunch at a really good Thai place, called Thai Sawadee.  We’d been there once before, and we will go again!  It’s in a shopping center, so you wouldn’t think it would be good, but then again…everything in Chesterfield is in a shopping center, isn’t it?

Tom Kha Khai soup:  I’ve had this soup at a variety of restaurants, and this was possibly the creamiest and most delicious I’ve ever had.

Thai Rama Chicken.  Chicken with a thick peanut sauce, and I loved it.  I ate more of it than I should have, but it was delicious.

So then it was teaching followed by the St Louis Symphony concert.  A really nice day!  Today was teaching and a “Glo Run” with a friend, neighbor, and blog reader Mandy.  I’ll tell you about that later (we ran/walked it since it was untimed and we were both quasi injured and perhaps just a bit lazy…) but it was okay.  Good company, of course.

While I was foam rolling yesterday my cat was hanging about, as usual.  We had a bit of a photo shoot.  Here’s my favorite:

She looks so SLIM, huh?  CRAZY.  This is like her myspace angle or something.

Anyway, what are you all up to this weekend?  Tell me something fun you’ve been doing, or are planning to do.

I flew to Phoenix Saturday morning for my sister’s “Bachelorette Party.”  I use quotations because I feel like we are too old for that sort of thing, but we did it anyway 😉  It was a last minute decision, and in retrospect I probably should have planned more in advance and thrown her a shower, but originally we didn’t think we’d be able to work that out.  She’s getting a lot of presents already so I don’t feel bad.

Leslie had this hedgehog candle from Target and also bought me one.

Anyway, my flight left at 7:30 am on Saturday and landed in Phoenix around 9 am.  Leslie picked me up and we hit the ground running.

Interesting fact:  lots of restaurants in Phoenix serve Coca-Cola light.  I can only hope this is a trend that is going to spread to St Louis soon!  We had lunch at Pane Bianco and then it was time to get ready for our big night out.  We were meeting at Loren’s at 3 pm.

I love this dress.  I also evidently really love posing with my arm out like that 😉

The bride to be and me!

Karen and I had a hard time getting a good picture of the two of us.  This was our best.

Loren made a cool thing which was jello shots in lemon peels.  They were tasty!

Anyway, that’s enough pictures from the night 😉  I’m not actually going to recap it here but it wasn’t that crazy.  Drinks, karaoke, sushi, and tater tots were involved.

The next morning we had some errands to run.  Brunch was in order first.

I ordered Croque Madame!  I didn’t realize it had tomatoes in it, and it wasn’t like any I had had in France, except it was very tasty.

After brunch we needed to go to the Japanese Garden where Leslie is getting married.  They gave us some cheerios to feed the Koi.

Party time!

It was a beautiful day and a beautiful location.  There was a wedding going out while we were there so we had to wait them out to do what we needed to do.  (It involved talking through the set up and decor—there isn’t going to be a rehearsal so this was my chance to see it before the day.)

Afterwards we decided to hit up the pool and sweat a bit.

Me!

My view from the chair.

Sarah came over to hang out a bit and we had a relaxing day, culminating in a nice dinner at a place called Fez and going to bed by 9 pm.

The next day we tried a run (which I already mentioned) and then Leslie had her final dress fitting.  This was the shop.  None of the dresses pictures are hers—I’m not going to spoil it beforehand obviously.  Her dress looked great and I learned how to bustle it and do a couple of clasps in the back.

And another Coca-Cola Light at lunch!

After lunch we did a few more things and just hung out.  My flight was in the evening and I got home very late—it was delayed an hour too!

How was your weekend? Is Coca-cola Light available where you live? Does anyone know if I can get it somewhere in St Louis?

And I head back, this time with Chris, in a couple of days for the wedding proper.  Can’t wait!

Weekend update…I had a very busy but fun weekend.  Friday night Chris and I were going to cook but we got lazy and went to Frazer’s instead.  We hadn’t been there in awhile and it is always good.  I had Duck confit (one of the specials—Frazer’s is ALL about specials) which reminded me of France (le sigh.) Oh and this tasty looking salad.

It was a Pear Endive Salad.  Very delicious!  Why did I take a picture of my salad but not the duck?  I guess that’s just how I roll.

Saturday was a full day of teaching (makeup lessons and a class) followed by a wedding.  After that I had plans with Melissa to go to Farmhaus Restaurant.  I had wanted to go for awhile but hadn’t found a good time.  According to the website they don’t take reservations for less than four people so we had to just walk in.  Luckily we were able to get two seats at the bar (very tiny).  We split everything except dessert and drinks.  (You all know I don’t share my drinks.)

The menu changes daily—you can see the date in the corner. 

Cotechino. The greens were delicious too—maybe that’s a sign I need to eat more vegetables?  Or, more likely, they were drenched in animal fat and thusly, delicious.

Crostini—these I think were my favorites!

Nachos—yeah I got fancier with this picture.

I tried the Hipster Princess and Scratches Lemonade.  It seemed that Scratches was the bartender.

This was a peanut butter mousse with chocolate around it.  It was very good, but Melissa’s pecan pie with root beer ice cream was better.  Oh well.

Sunday I had more teaching followed by a concert at First Presbyterian of Kirkwood.

Amazing stained glass window back drop.  I guess the picture is a little blurry, huh?  I’ll try to take a better one next time I’m in there!  The concert went well.  Finally Sunday evening I just relaxed at home with Chris.  I bet you were worried 😉

Oh and Monday night was Pho Grand:

SO yummy!

Tried any good restaurants lately?