The Dinnertime Divas

A few months ago, several friends and I decided to start our own Supper Club. We meet once a month to prepare a set of meals to take home and freeze. We recently decided to start our own blog, as a way of documenting the recipes we enjoy, as well as the craziness that usually ensues when we all get together. Head on over to http://www.thedinnertimedivas.blogspot.com/ to check us out. Come back often, as we will all be posting our favorite Supper Club recipes. Maybe we'll even inspire you to start your own Supper Club!

A Snowy Hike

On Saturday, we packed Hoosier in the car and headed up north to Anderson to Mounds State Park. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so I don't have any pictures. It really was not the most picturesque park, however, so you're not really missing out. We only spent an hour or two hiking the trails then we headed back home. Not one of my favorites, but it was still nice to get out and walk for awhile.

Coming up: The debut of the Dinnertime Divas...

A Valentine's Treat

This Valentine's weekend was quite a treat for me. On Saturday, my dad drove up from Georgia to visit us. My Aunt Mary, grandma and cousin Emily also drove down from Muncie for dinner and to visit. We had a delicious meal of pulled pork sandwiches, strawberry-banana fruit salad, veggie salad, stuffed potatoes and cookie dough brownies with chocolate ganache...some of my favorite recipes. I also attempted a new dessert...fondant-covered Oreo Cakesters. I found the recipe here. It seems like a difficult recipe, but it's really not...and it was actually a lot of fun to make!

Here's the lineup...Oreo Cakesters, a box of fondant (I got mine at Michael's), food coloring, sprinkles, cupcake liners (you don't have to have these, I just thought they were cute), a fondant cutting tool (a knife will work just fine), tube icing and cupcake stencils (ended up not using these because they were too big...very cute, though) ...




First, add ONE drop of red food coloring to the fondant to make this pink color (add more if you want red or none if you want it white). Knead the fondant and then roll it out with a rolling pin...

Cut it into squares big enough to cover the Oreo...

Cover the Oreo and trim off the excess at the bottom so they look like this (this may take a bit of practice to get a smooth look)...

Place them in cute cupcake liners, if you so choose...

The dark pink below was my attempt at red. For some reason, I couldn't get the fondant any darker than this...

Then, go to town decorating the tops with the icing. Here are a few of the designs I tried...

How cute are these!?

These could really be adapted for just about any holiday or occasion. I know I'll definitely be making more soon...actually, I'm going to make some for my Girl Scout troop today!

I hope you all enjoyed your Valentine's Day! Enjoy!

The Great Cookie Pick-Up

Today after school, Jessica, Elizabeth, Karen and I hopped in our cars and headed out to pick up the 109 cases of Girl Scout cookies our girls sold (in case you're wondering, that's over 1300 boxes of cookies). We actually got to just sit in our cars as their workers loaded us up.

Jessica and Elizabeth liked this system...




Unfortunately, they wouldn't let us take the workers with us back to school so we had to unload all the cases and haul them down to Jessica's classroom.

By then, we were feeling a little silly (E, J, K)...

and goofy (J, E, K)...

and tired (me, J, K)...

and goofy again (E, K, me)...

But, in the end, we got the job done...all without eating a single cookie.

Snowiness

Indy has seen a lot of snow in the past week. We woke up Saturday morning to about 6-8 inches on the ground. That, of course, meant some serious shoveling needed to be done. As I had had a pretty rough night on Friday and didn't sleep well, I decided shoveling our (fairly) long driveway would be great therapy. It actually worked! It took me about an hour and a half. Lucky for me, Don woke up while I was toiling away (heaviest and wettest snow I have ever seen) and thought he would take some pictures for me to use on my blog (aren't I a lucky girl?). So, here I am finishing up...




Ah, isn't it pretty?

The backyard...

A different view of the backyard...

Mother Nature decided not to let up on us yet. Monday night brought a few more inches of snow so I woke up Tuesday to a...SNOW DAY (except I didn't actually wake up to it, I found out when I was about halfway to work). I turned around and enjoyed the rest of my day at home. Unfortunately, today it was back to business as usual.

Coming up: The fam is coming to visit this weekend so I will surely have a lot of pics and probably a lot to say!

Happy End of the Week!

Super Bowl Sunday

Sunday was a big day at our house...our beloved Indianapolis Colts made it all the way to Super Bowl XLIV, along with the New Orleans Saints.

Jessica came over early to cook and bake with me. She made a pizza dip, and I made buffalo chicken dip. Then, we made cake balls. They were delicious! However, we ran out of white chocolate so we covered some in white fondant.



Some we just left plain. These tasted a lot like donut holes.

We had a lot of fun making the cake balls.

This was our first time working with fondant. It took a little bit, but we finally got the hang of it. The fondant covered cake balls actually turned out the best!

We decorated them with the Colts horseshoe.

We also made cookie dough brownies. They look delicious enough like this...

but adding chocolate ganache made them even better...

We had a great time making everything...if only the Colts could have pulled off another Super Bowl win. Oh well, there's always next year...

Simple Pleasures

For a variety of reasons, I had a pretty rough day at work today. When I came home and started doing my daily blog reading ritual, I came across the Simple Pleasures blog hop that Kelly's Korner was hosting. I thought it seemed like a great way to put myself in a better mood so here goes. Here is my list of simple pleasures...

• the feel of new socks
• the feeling I get right after getting a haircut
• chocolate cupcakes (OK, any chocolate really)
• snuggling with Hoosier
• reading a good book
• a really good cup of decaf
• the feeling I get as I walk out of church on Sundays
• Monday night Fish Balls with the girls (sounds weird but it's really not)
• cuddling up with Don to watch "West Wing"
• a favorite song
• the feeling I get when I wear a new outfit for the first time
• discovering a card addressed to me in the mailbox (or 2, as was the case today!)
• the smell of chlorine (I know, this also sounds weird, but I've been a swimmer my whole life so I love it)
• checking things off a to-do list
• baking or cooking

OK, I'm pretty sure I could keep going, but I'm going to stop there. I feel better already...Happy Wednesday!