Cooking with the Girls

So much fun cooking with friends tonight.

Here's a list of our ingredients:
1 pound butter
64 oz. heavy cream
20 cans black beans
6 cartons chicken stock
8 bunches cilantro
2 heads garlic
4 shallots
6 onions
5 lbs carrots
12 pounds potatoes
4 pounds peas
6 huge roasted chickens
1 bottle vino
etc.

We made 8 chicken pot pies from scratch with a white wine butter sauce.
Cuban black bean soup for 40.

Thanks Kelly, Jessie, Karly & Kaaron for all the help!!

Tomorrow...ladies game night.

Creamy Chocolate Frosting

Just a quick post as I have much to do on this frigid day.

Last night we had a cozy dinner & I made a cake to surprise the boys and my hard working, snow shoveling husband.

Allrecipes featured a photo of cupcakes with creamy chocolate frosting that looked so good. I had all the ingredients on hand, so I gave it a whirl & so glad I did.

This is AMAZING frosting. I am going to be making some more when I frost our Vantine's goodies.

Here's the link. See for yourself:
http://www.allrecipes.com/Recipe/Creamy-Chocolate-Frosting/Detail.aspx?prop31=1

Your 8am Blizzard update

This is our street. The plows haven't touched it yet.

It's still coming down! Charlie would definitely be lost on the deck, not to mention the side of our house. Brewing coffee, enjoying living in a snowglobe.

We wake to this....

Around 5am...

Oh, Chicago

Our power is back on after a 3 hour outage. I am starting to think that Laura Ingalls Wilder had a pretty rough life, especially during the blizzards they encountered. What brave ancestors we had. Sometimes I romanticize that whole pioneer era and although there were some wonderful aspects, there are so many hardships the endured. A storm like this would be terrifying without the buffer of our neighbors home, our heavily insulated walls, and readily available light, heat & food sources. Thank you, Lord, for Your excellent provision.

E & I lit some candles and made a giant bed on the floor for the boys & us. Luckily, E made it safely home & we sat down to a hot dinner of Swedish meatballs & mashed potatoes. Hooray for comfort food!

It is crazy to look outside & see such huge drifts of snow. The pictures I took were at 10pm and the storm is "just getting started". E's car will likely be buried in the morning. It's hard to believe that our beautiful Magnolia tree (photo #3) will be covered in lush pink blooms in just a few months...

The 2nd picture is our back deck. You are looking at 3 foot drifts concealing our fire pit.

Stay warm, fellow Chicagoans! Will post more pictures as the plot thickens on our blizzard story.

Busy Week to Come

January has been a crazy month.

My uncle passed away suddenly last Sunday & we were awash in sadness at his passing. My aunt will be learning life without her dear husband and struggling to tend to the needs of my Grandma (still in nursing home). If you can remember to pray for MaryLou, please do.

On our home front, the boys have been sick all week with fevers that have now become coughs. Charlie is obsessed with Magic School Bus and has been watching it on a "circuit"...permitted because it is better than him running around & starting a coughing jag. Note: I know all the words to the theme song.

My etsy store is doing well! I sold a pair of mittens this week & last night a leather bag. It sold quickly for $50. Guess how much I paid for it? $1.50. YES, a buck fifty. T man spotted it at the thrift store and I looked it over carefully, wondering why it said $1.50 as is. I suppose a little dirty leather made them thing it was a hopeless bag. A little saddle soap, elbow grease & buffing later-voila! BEAUTIFUL. You can check out my etsy page at: www.etsy.com/shop/Sugarcookielady. Check under sales and you can see the stellar results.

Need to contact a woman who called me about a cookie order. I completed an order for her last year & she was wonderful to work with.

Finally, I am so excited to cook for Ladies Game Night this Saturday. We have 40 people signed up so far, possible more after tomorrow's sign-up deadline. Per a few requests, I will be making my chicken, mushroom & wild rice soup. Not sure about the other soups yet. Maybe black bean for a vegetarian option and probably chili so we can gussy it up with topping options. Original plan was to make several pies & have hot bread as well. My mind is simplifying some of those details, but it will all be good!! My friends Jessie & Kelly & maybe more are going to be cooking with me & adult conversation will be one of the highlights of the week for me.

The picture I posted was from the last Ladies Night that I cooked for. Our sweets table!

And I hit my goal last night for January-working out 20 days of the month. Woohoo!

Upcycling Joys

Charlie's favorite thing in our kitchen is his big boy chair. We have a small house and his Peg Perego highchair was so big for our table space. In addition, it seemed like he was on his own island away from our table when we would eat dinner every night.

My Aunt Margaret always had a tall chair at her table for her children. This chair was perfect for little ones who wanted to sit at the table yet were still to small for a regular chair. Online searches found similar ones, very well Amish made children's chairs. The price was more than I wanted to pay & that's how our very own child's chair was fashioned....

One afternoon, I spotted a Jenny Lind style high chair. Old, wooden, solid and $8!! T & I hauled it home and got down to business. Below is an example of a similar high chair:

We removed the tray and then the metal hardware (that attached the tray to the arm rests). We sidled the chair up to our kitchen table to check measurements. It was necessary to cut the arm rests back a few inches and trim the bottom of the legs a bit. After we made the changes, it slid up to the table.

Next, we sanded and then painted our chair. After it dried in the sunshine, we brought it in & Charlie has been sitting pretty ever since!

He enjoys being able to climb up all by himself and I love how the chair looks great at our kitchen table. It matches our glossy black spindle chairs perfectly.


As promised, here is the Swiffer cloth idea.

I made my cloths from leftover flannel scraps, but the microfiber cloths from the dollar store would work really well. (You probably wouldn't even need to sew/serge them).

No worries about exact measurements, just about the size of a paper towel. The main thing is that you are able to tuck it into the place on the Swiffer that "catches" the cloth.

The flannel gets better the more it is washed. Great for a dry sweep or a light damp mop. Just toss into your washer when finished.