Soup Cooking Club

Nancy hosted an afternoon of soup for the February installment of cooking club. Soup line!



Somebody had to make bread, and Valerie volunteered!



Roasted garlic, rosemary potato bread. Oh, hi.



Nancy made tomato sesame soup! It was sooooo good, and went really well with the bread!



So far, Charlotte has attended every cooking club at Nancy's since she was born! This was her third one. But this was the FIRST one where she could actually eat with us! And that is what cooking club is all about.



Emily and Charlotte both enjoyed tasting all the soups.



Emily made cream of broccoli soup. It was delicious!



Yumi made Chinese hot pot! In fact, she made TWO! Two different delicious hot broths, in which she cooked a variety of fresh ingredients.



The first broth was a VERY SPICY meaty broth! It was SO SPICY. I could barely handle it! But the flavor was really good.



The second broth was a seafood broth, and it featured prawns. I ate his eyeballs. They were crunchy!



Charlotte LOOOVED it!



Summer did an Asian version of chicken noodle soup, with rice noodles and fresh herbs.



And I also did an Asian noodle soup! Mine had shitakes, tofu, and coconut milk.



Nancy made some truffles so that we could finish with a treat! They were soooo rich and delicious.

Suzanne's bachelorette party!

Suzanne is getting married!! Whee!! This weekend was her bachelorette party and bridal shower up in Mentor, Ohio. Summer, Yumi and I headed up for the bachelorette portion of the weekend. We kicked off festivities with manicures and pedicures at a salon. Bubbles and bubbly!



Happy bachelorette!



Ladies.



Summer made sure that Suzanne didn't get thirsty!



Nails! Suzanne's are the dark purple, Summer's are the green and gold, and mine are the orangey gold.



Suzanne's looked like cosmic SPACE nails! And Summer's looked like Athens Bulldogs!



Suzanne's cousin Karrie hosted us at her house that evening for food and fun. The ladies worked together to provide a delicious spread. Guacamole, hot nacho dip, tortilla chips, salsa and seven layer dip!



Everything was so plentiful and delicious, I was SURE it was dinner.



BUT NO!! Those were just the appetizers!! Because then Karrie served up chicken enchiladas, soft shell AND hard shell beef tacos, and corn bread! There was SO much delicious food.



Check it out! My nails matched the placemats!



We played Cards Against Humanity.



Okay so, throughout the night, whenever I would grab something out of the fridge, I noticed this giant bowl of pudding. Also, on the counter, there was a tray of pink cupcakes. I thought to myself, "I wonder which treat is for tonight and which treat she's taking to the bridal shower tomorrow?" WRONG. Both treats were for tonight AND ALSO a dish of caramel heath bar apple dip.



Look at the size of that bowl of pudding!!! I could SIT in it! I kind of wanted to! Karrie really went above and beyond making sure there was plenty of delicious food for us bachelorette partiers. It was so great to see Suzanne. I can't wait for her wedding!

More Snow!

It snowed so much last night!



Ben got to break in our new snow shovel.

Tropical Cooking Club

As the host for this year's January installment of cooking club, I decided to do a "tropical" theme. This winter has been so brutally cold, I figured it would be a great chance to escape the chill and pretend we were somewhere warm. Wouldn't you know, we got a winter storm this afternoon!



It snowed all day.



There was lots of texting back and forth about whether or not to cancel the dinner.



We canceled it, we uncanceled it.



But ultimately, we soldiered on and everyone braved the weather to come to my tropical paradise.



WELCOME!!! I had the fireplace roaring and the house was toasty and warm.



Summer got us started with a delicious tropical cocktail. Mango Passion! Mango, vodka, lime and champagne.



Cheers!



Sluuuurp.



Aloha!



Yumi brought a delicious pot of soup.



We kicked things off with Valerie's scallop papaya ceviche. I LOVED this. I love scallops the most. This was too scallopy for a few of the ladies at the table, but it was all I could do not to gobble theirs down too! I knew I had to save room for the future, though.



Yumi's Vietnamese sour tamarind soup! This had jumbo shrimp and catfish in it and a delightful sweet-sour flavor. There's pineapple in there!



Nancy made a seaweed salad with carrots.



Yum. We were all in agreement that this was delicious!



Then we took a break for another round of Summer's tropical cocktails! Blue Hawaiians this time.



Cheers!



For my dish, I made Thai Shrimp Halibut Curry.



This was awesome! I love halibut so much. Coconutty and limy – we felt like we were on the beach!



Emily capped of the evening with a scrumptious coconut flan. Oh, hi!



What winter? What snow? We felt like we were in a tropical paradise!!!



Aloha!