I can’t remember if I posted a picture of the food stadium all disassembled and ready to be stored or not… so just in case, here it is!
And just to refresh your memory, here is it done:
And here it is all packed up!
Writing about all the big & little things
Category: Food (Page 3 of 6)
We had a big superbowl party on Sunday–it had a large number of people and a large quantity of food. 🙂
Tim had an idea to make a food stadium. He found the idea online somewhere and decided it would be fun. So he did it all from scratch and has been working on it for almost a month, planning and putting the different pieces together. I admit I was a bit skeptical about the whole thing and I told him if he wanted to do it fine, but that I didn’t really want to help. Well… that didn’t last for long. We ended up working on little projects here and there together and, even though I didn’t want to admit it at first, I really did have a good time helping him.
In order to fill this massive unit with food, Tim came up with a “seating chart” of different foods that could go in the sections and each family signed up for what they wanted to bring. That really helped to relieve the stress (and cost!) of trying to fill it all. Plus it really helped to build a sense of unity in everyone helping to make it complete.
And, in the end, it turned out awesome!
Want to see pictures? OK! Here’s the finished stadium just before we dug in!
If you’re curious there are 33 items to eat on the table. 33! But this doesn’t even count a variety of items that wouldn’t even fit… I think there were 5 or 6 more things on the counter beside the table. Did I mention it was a lot of food? But then again there were 30 people here, so we needed a lot of food… 😉
Now for a barrage of in-process and completed pictures:
On Saturday I got together with a couple friends and we made Christmas goodies galore! We were there for about 6 hours baking, melting, laughing, eating, assembling and just hanging out. It was wonderful. And look! We ended up making 17 different kinds of goodies!
Yup. 17.
And technically 18 if you count the homemade egg nog, but I forgot to take a picture of that…
Want to know what it all is?
Top left square: Dipped pretzel rods, sour cream cookies, peanut butter cookies & peanut butter balls cookies with chocolate drizzle
Top right square: Oreo truffles, white chocolate peppermint fudge, peanut butter fudge & dark chocolate peppermint fudge
Bottom left square: Ginger cookies, lemon tea-cakes, cream cheese mints, rolo pretzel things/hersheys kiss things with peanut m&m
Bottom right square: Spiced shortbread cookies, peanut butter marbled treats, peppermint meringues, candy cane cookies & “little pretzel presents”
Ok, to be fair, we did make a couple of things ahead of time. For example I made the peppermint meringues the day before because they had to good for almost and hour and a half in the oven, and I couldn’t hog the oven for that long for just one thing… 🙂 And Lisa made the sour cream cookies and adorable mints ahead of time too… But still. That’s a lot of variety, don’t you think?
So, come on over and have some treats! I just can’t guarantee how long these yummies will last! 😉
It’s that time again–our annual Pumpkin Party/college reunion! 🙂 It was another gorgeous weekend and the kids came in costume, which is so much fun. We, one again, gorged ourselves on delicious food and enjoyed wonderful conversation and enjoyed looking at the scrapbook of past years. It marks 10 years of getting together!
Here are some photos of our fun!
Our finished creations! (the one on the right used to say “creepy” until it was accidentally knocked off the table…. oops!)
The Aldrich Clan!
Rebekah and Aaron
Nelson Family!
The playground was WELL used. 🙂
Kid pumpkin time
And kid carving time
Friesen Crew
Those jammies make me smile! This is Esma–she’s 1.5 years old.
And finally the kiddos getting ready to watch a movie
Well, I’m officially full. We’ve decided that for the duration of this school year I can’t accept any new students. I did have a few drop out at the beginning of this school year so I did fill those slots but now I need to stop adding any. The hope is that next year I can pull back slightly–maybe having the 1/2 hour that Chloe gets home from school free so I can see her… as well as keeping in mind that in a couple of years I’m going to want to go to after school activities once in a while and at this point I can’t. I will lose a handful of Seniors after this year, so that will also drop me down a little, but I have such a hard time saying no to new students… especially when I hear that “everyone is full.” Luckily one of my adult piano students (who has her music teaching license) is starting to take on beginner students now, so I can refer them to her.
So, anyway, it will be a very full year of teaching this year for sure, and we’ll just have to wait and see how next year pans out.
In other news, I’m starting to think ahead to our Pumpkin Party and I am just brimming with cute fall ideas that I can’t wait to try. Look at these delicious/cute/creative/festive creations & decorations! Now we’ll see if I can actually make any of these things actually happen…
Click on this link to see the webpage these adorable orange pumpkins came from…
sorry, I couldn’t find the link on this one…
Here’s the link for the recipe for this Pumpkin Bread with Maple Glaze…. yummm….
Okay okay, just one more…
Here’s the link for this “Blooming Apple”
You bake it and it turns into pure caramel filled apple deliciousness. At least that’s what that website implies. 😉
Yesterday we had some friends over for a “homemade ice cream + homemade waffle cone + sprinkler party!” It was on my summer to-do list.
Homemade “No Churn” Ice Cream
We had 4 flavors of ice cream: 1) Mint chocolate chip, 2) Vanilla, 3) Chocolate, 4) Blueberry Cheesecake. I enjoyed 3 of the 4 flavors immensely… not so much the mint chocolate chip. It was made of all “healthy” foods and was too bitter in my opinion. But we had a great time tasting the flavors and making the waffle cones. So the kids played in the sprinklers for a while and then ate ice cream for a while and then ran through the sprinklers again to clean off all the ice cream! 🙂
And today is my birthday (yay me!) so we’ve done all sort of exciting things: killing Japanese beetles, Chloe drew me a nice card, went out to eat for breakfast, went on a 3 mile run, enjoyed some caribou and then Tim got off work early! So, we’re about to enjoy a delicious dinner and I think I heard something about ice cream cake!!
July 2013
I’ve decided to be fun and start using my ice cream maker again! I have a little electronic one that looks like this:
So, I dug all the parts out and I started looking for recipes. I’m pleased to say that our first recipe turned out surprisingly well. It is very, very, creamy as opposed to “icy”–which also means that it melts very fast. Oh, and it’s just plain chocolate. I had extra ingredients to make another batch so I did that this morning and wouldn’t you know… my ice cream maker quit working. It started again after a while, and then quit again… so I finally gave up and just put it in the freezer. We’ll see if I’m able to even scoop it or if it will be too hard. I’m so bummed! Wouldn’t it just figure that when I decide to start using my ice cream maker that’s when it decides to break… 🙂 Oh, well. We’ll let it rest for a bit and see if it works again later.
I made pancakes the other day and asked Chloe what color she would like them…….. BLUE! 🙂
They loved the pancakes and Josiah was hamming it up at the table while I took pictures….
That’s right–you read that correctly. We made homemade ravioli tonight. I’ve always thought making homemade pasta sounded so fancy (and impossibly difficult) but I’m pleased to say that it was not nearly as bad as I envisioned it. Don’t get me wrong, it was definitely time consuming (hence doing it on my spring break) but not terribly hard.
We had planned to make it without a ravioli tool, but after more thought, we decided to just go ahead and purchase the tool–and let me tell you it was SO nice.
See, I’m very excited about the tool. And it’s very sturdy thick metal, so it will last for a long time…
Here’s the quick picture summary of the process:
First make dough from scratch. And yes, I did knead it for the suggested 10 min. if you were curious… 🙂
Next: Put one layer of dough over form. Put indentation form on top of the dough to create little pockets. Fill pockets with cheese mixture (Tim made that earlier)
Now top with another layer of dough.
Then firmly press a rolling pin across the top of the form.
Still rolling and pressing…
And rolling… it was really fun and easy!
Then flip the form over and gently help the ravioli drop free of the form.
Finally boil for 6-7 minutes and enjoy!
I must say I’m pretty pleased with how well it turned out. We served it will spaghetti sauce and cheese sprinkled on top. We all agreed it was good–Josiah even asked for seconds. I feel so accomplished now that I can say “I made homemade ravioli!”
I made green smoothies the other weekend when Stacy came up to visit and the kids saw me making them–I hadn’t realized that it had been so long since I made them last. I wasn’t in a very “health conscious” mood when we lived in the rental house and then I just got out of the habit of making sure I have spinach on hand… so months have gone by with no smoothies.
Well, they were ecstatic to have them again. So for snack this morning I surprised them with another green smoothie. Let me tell you, you would think I was giving them frosting from a can, they love it so much. 😉
It makes me happy.
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