Birthday Dinner for Emily & Me

Tonight we had a little dinner at Purple Chopstix to celebrate my birthday and Emily's birthday! Summer brought DELICIOUS pomegranate cardamom martinis.



Emily and I both wore our new birthday scarves that Nancy knit!



Cheers!



Tom Yum!!



Cutest spoon ever.



Sweet potato peanut pasta!



Blurry slice of delicious carrot cake.

Garden Tea Party Cooking Club!

Emily was our cooking club hostess this month. It was a beautiful afternoon, and we had a garden tea party! I made smoked salmon, cucumber, & lemon dill cream cheese tea sandwiches on pumpernickel bread, and curried egg salad tea sandwiches on white bread. Valerie made pecan shortbread!



Valerie also made mini Crab Napoleons. Yumi made mini Tuna Supremes!



Nancy made parmesan cheese sticks with gentleman's relish (anchovies, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger).



She also made lemon squares!



Emily made currant scones with clotted cream.



We all dressed in our finest outfits, including Miss Charlotte!



This is what Charlotte does to people!!!



Emily made us Royal Tea Gin Cocktails. Here you can get a peek at her amazing kitchen renovation!



Cheers!



Oh, hi!



Milou and Charlotte.



Fancy lady!



I do not know what is going on in this picture, but I love it.



Emily set up a lovely table for us out on her deck.






Tea party spread!



Summer made us a Chamomile Gin Cocktai. It was a ginny afternoon!



Cooking club!



A true lady always has a cocktail in each gloved hand.



We also drank actual tea, of course! Our first nibbles were the smoked salmon sandwiches and the Crab Napoleons.



Mmm, pumpernickel.



Teapot!



Tuna supreme and parmesan stick!



Oh, so fancy!



Curried egg salad sandwiches.



Scone with clotted cream. I don't believe I had ever had clotted cream before, but man. I could eat it all the livelong day!



Treats!



Summer made chamomile chardonnay ice cream. It was so smoooooth.



Ladies!



Garden party shoes.



Charlotte!



Happy!



Charlotte was eating some gouda, and I hoped that she would be generous and share with me.



And she did! What a nice girl!



She also shared some with the ground.



Thanks, Emily, for hosting a delightful afternoon cooking club!

Pawpaw Fest 2013

The Ohio Pawpaw Festival gets bigger and better every year, and this year it was HUGE! So many people came out for the fest that there were some issues with parking. Folks were encouraged to head to one of the free shuttle lots to park. We went to the lot at the Albany Fairgrounds. When we saw the line of people waiting to take the shuttle to the festival, we decided to just walk! Albany is about 1.7 miles from Lake Snowden where the Ohio Pawpaw Festival is held.



It was an adventure!



We made it!



Heading into the fest. Look at all those cars!



We got to roll VIP-style since I am the webmaster for the Pawpaw Fest web site.



Lori, Rik, me and Ben!



Cheers! Jackie O's delicious Pawpaw Wheat. Doesn't it look like a ray of sunshine in a glass?



Cheers, Kayla!



Ben and me!



We ran into Dennis, too!



This year there was a new feature at the festival - The Pawpaw Gauntlet! This was a giant obstacle course race.



Stilts!



We also ran into Leda!



It got dark and cold FAST.



We opted to take the shuttle back to the fairgrounds rather than walk in the dark. I was pretty jealous of this girl's outfit.