Southern Cooking Club

Yumi hosted the October cooking club, and the theme was Southern food. MMM. She started us off with delicious bourbon sweet tea cocktails!



Cheers! Tonight was also the annual Uptown Athens Halloween Block Party, so in the spirit of Halloween, Summer and I wore wigs.



I was also covered in spiders.



Cheers!





Aren't they so CREEPY?!



Time to dish up!



LOOK AT HOW MUCH SPAGHETTI YUMI OWNS!!!!!!!!!



Dinner time! Yumi made traditional fried chicken.



She also made blackened catfish!



Summer made a gumbo. Look at her spooky bone arrangement!



I made macaroni and cheese. It was my first time, and I would HIGHLY recommend this recipe. It is Martha Stewart's classic macaroni and cheese, by way of Smitten Kitchen. I used sourdough for the bread cubes on top.



Valerie made biscuits! Some with cheese and some without.



Time for some wine!



Cheers!



A delicious plateful of Southern deliciousness. The greens are Emily's collard greens in bacon fat. All the components of this dinner went together smashingly, and it was totally YUM!



After dinner, we played Mad Gab. This always guarantees big laughs!!





Nancy recently got an iPhone 5GS, and it has the capability to take slow motion videos. These are hilarious to watch!! Here is a montage of slow-mo Mad Gab. Also, I have noticed that in many photos of me, I am always gesticulating with my hands, and this video captures that big time. I have no idea what I was pointing about, but MAN was I pointing!!!



Nancy made sweet potato pie for dessert. I had never had it before. It is sooooooooo good!!!!! Like pumpkin pie, but different.



SWEET POTATO PIE!!!!!!!!



I brought two of my old wool coats to dinner, hoping that I could find new homes for them and make some room in my coat closet. I've worn both of these for YEARS, but neither one ever really fit me very well. I'm short and my shoulders are puny so they always looked shapeless and dumpy on me. But LOOK at how great they look on Emily and Yumi!! These ladies ROCK these coats!! My mom originally bought that red one in 1984! I'm so happy that they have found better homes.



After Nancy dropped me off at my house at the end of the night, she and Summer happened to find a perfect parking spot for uptown on their way home, so they decided to stop by block party and check things out! Nancy texted me a video, and it looked like a good crowd this year. Look at those Pac-Man ghosts!