Saturday, January 24, 2015

Superfood Cooking Club

For the January installment of cooking club, Summer hosted and chose superfoods as the theme! The rules were very loose, we basically just had to incorporate something healthy into our dishes. Nancy started us off with kale chips as an appetizer!



Summer's superfood was sardines, which she prepared three ways. First we enjoyed sardines smashed with avocado on broiled toast. This was delicious! I could have just had a platter of these and been satisfied!



Tsssssssst goes the frier!



Beer battered fried sardines! YUM!! These were awesome too.



Emily baked eggs inside of avocados!



With a little cheese sprinkled on top.



Mmm. Served with little toasts to dip into the gooey warm egg and avocado wonderland.



Yumi used Korean doenjang (bean paste) to make a soup! Filled with greens, mushrooms, radishes, tofu and more!



I made this terribly unphotogenic but totally delicious swiss chard and sweet potato gratin. From Smitten Kitchen. YUM!!



Nancy made a decidedly PHOTOGENIC kale salad! With goat cheese, toasted almonds and dried cranberries.



Summer's third sardines dish featured these enormous sardines that she traveled to Columbus to get!! She cooked them up with some roasted red peppers.



These were awesome!



Look, just like in the cartoons!



Now, before we get to the dessert course, please enjoy this series of completely gratuitous photos of Milo in a bunny sweater.







































For the dessert course, Valerie made chocolate lava cakes with a blueberry coulis! She talked about the coulis all night, about how it was possibly the best dish she'd ever made for cooking club and how she couldn't wait to serve it. By the time the cakes were out of the oven, we couldn't wait to sink our teeth into those chocolate cakes with.... "those blueberries look kind of like black beans!"



"SHIT!!!! They ARE black beans!" We laughed for ten minutes. Then cried for ten.  Valerie had the blueberry coulis in the same type of Tupperware as her leftover canned black beans and accidentally grabbed the wrong one. Then happily dished them all up in the kitchen without looking too closely until they were delivered to the table. Funniest moment in cooking club history?!

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Mer hosted a birthday dinner for Mom! Mer made some healthy sides like kale salad...



...and roasted sweet potatoes.



AND FOR THE MAIN COURSE WE HAD MILLER'S CHICKEN!!!!!! Why have we never thought of this as a birthday dinner before!? Bucket of chicken and lots of tasty fried sides!



The birthday girl got to pass out the chicken pieces.



MMM!



YUM!! Fried breast and fried pickle.



Mom's first fried pickle of her life! She loved it!



Strawberry milk mustache.



Kate had a special birthday surprise for us in the living room.



Her very first piano recital!! She just started taking lessons this week!



After the performance, it was time for cake! Mer made a chocolate cake with a fancy cinnamon dusted on top.



HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MOM!



Make a wish!



Cake and ice cream!

Thursday, January 01, 2015

Happy New Year!

Ben and I had family over tonight to celebrate the start of a new year.



We had cranberry cosmo champagne cocktails. Cheers!



The tradition is to have Good Luck Pork for dinner on New Year's Day, so this year we celebrated taco style! Carnitas with black beans and rice.



Happy New Year!



Mom made some chocolate peppermint cookies, and I made chewy molasses ginger cookies. Here's to a happy 2015!