Company for Lunch

I love to have company for lunch

And two of my favorites are Shaun and Jeffrey,

dear friends

To make a fourth, friend Jean joined our group

Luncheon is always served in the dining room

the table set for a company lunch

A Quaker lace cloth

my Aynsley Pembroke china

damask napkins in silver rings

The Aynsley Pembroke

A 1900s plate on the bottom and a 2000s cream soup cup and saucer on top

Flowers in a silver centerpiece flanked by tall candles in silver candlesticks

Whenever I entertain . . . 

It takes a library to prepare a meal

I love choosing a menu and recipes from different books

Butternut Squash Soup

an adaptation of Pumpkin Soup from Anna Pump's Country Weekend Entertaining

Parmesan Biscuit Bites 

from Top of the Cellar Tea Room Cookbook

Champagne Chicken

from Damon Lee Fowler's Savannah Cookbook

Chocolate Raspberry Christmas Cake

from a forum that I visit

Received rave reviews on the forum and so I thought it would be a great dessert for company

Because I baked it in my small bundt pans, I served three slices

topped with whipped cream and garnished with fresh raspberries

We ate and talked and all too soon it was after 2 p.m.

And they had to leave!

It was a fun afternoon and I love having company over --

spending the morning cooking food

And then having guests enjoy my meal around my dining room table.

Cookbook Book Club 2018

We meet on the last Thursday of the month,

The Cookbook Book Club

So October is always our last meeting

for Thanksgiving and Christmas

are the last of November and December

For January, we had to go to Plan B

Rita was gracious to offer her home for our meeting

It was a wonderful array!

Our "go to" when we're at a loss is always appetizers

We had a wonderful array!

Angela's  Thai lettuce wraps

Her presentation is like a magazine spread

And they were good!!!

Rita's Dixie's Salsa

It's good, it's easy and would be a great addition to a Super Bowl party!

Donna's Tri Color Hummus (regular, sun dried tomato and spinach and parsley)
plus roasted carrot dip
They were all good but I think a lot of us fell in love with the carrot dip!

Belynda's breadsticks

Easy but oh, so good

And such a cute presentation as well -- upright in a container rather than flat on a plate!

Michelle's cranberry and goat cheese

An Ina "recipe" 

You don't have to make everything --

You buy "good" and serve it with a smile

And it was very good!

Belynda's Korean Chicken wings

Yummy!

Barbara's cold veggie pizza

I've eaten it before, I've made it a time or two but Barbara's was the best I've ever had

Perhaps it was the chopped vegetables on top -- 

She used a bag of chopped veggie salad rather than chopping the vegetables herself 

How smart is that!

 My garlic clouds

They were deflated clouds but still tasted good and garlicky!

The first plate with tastes of everything!

We all went back for seconds

(And I think a few of us went back for thirds!)

And no meeting of the Cookbook Book Club

can be complete without dessert

Rhonda's Very Vanilla Cake

Which was very good although it was not pretty.

And I didn't get a picture of the Red Velvet Cake that Michelle brought to celebrate

Belynda's birthday earlier in the week.

It was good to be back together again

We talked, we laughed, we ate, we got caught up.

We're eagerly awaiting February --

We're being taught how to make pizza crust

And we're each bringing toppings!

The Breakfast Room Chairs . . . .

Our Breakfast Room

or 

Breakfast porch

tacked onto the back of the house

It's where we eat most of our meals

It's not original to the house

We added it in 2007

And a wonderful addition it has been

But this isn't about the breakfast room

It's about the breakfast room chairs!

Duncan Phyfe from the 30s or 40s I expect

They came with our dining room set

Mahogany

As most of these sets were

When I bought our "good" dining room chairs

I relegated these to the basement.

They were too good to get rid of.

And then we built the breakfast room

And I had chairs in the basement!

Husband Jim insisted on painting them black.

I'm not sure why, but we did

(and I hate to paint wood)

We covered the chairs in a black background toile 

Which seemed to fit

And we lived happily until 2015

For the black was starting to wear and I wanted my

"wood chairs" back!

So we stripped them

black painted chair on the left, refinished wood chair on the right

The black toile did not look as good and I found these wonderful

needlepoint chair seats on ebay

(and I so love needlepoint)

The chair seats

Summer of 2015

And they were pretty needlepoint

But there was just something

"not quite right"

with the needlepoint

The chair seats

August 2017

I found this toile that I thought went better with the wooden chairs

Better than the needlepoint

And then this January, I was housecleaning

Well, actually doing by January

"cabinets, closets and drawers" cleaning

I found fabric

Fabric I had bought for the breakfast room  chairs

about three years  ago

at a wonderful upholstery/drapery fabric shop in Springfield

I think the reason why I did not change out the chair seats then

was because they were black

And the fabric did not look good with the black chairs

But they're no longer black

And so one January afternoon,

I took the chairs apart again

And put the new fabric on the chairs!

I like them

A gold on gold textured damask

Which looks good with the wooden chairs

And the rest of the breakfast room furnishings.

So far my tally is:

Original chair seats -- 8 years

Needlepoint chair seats - 2 years

Second Toile chair seats - 5 months

I don't feel like I'm a changer just to change

But when something is "not right", I'll continue to work on it

until it is!

And hopefully, the seats are "just right"!

Part of my busy January!

It's Not My Fault

We had a great Christmas . . . 

Sarah and her family came down from Minnesota

However, my "Apple" got sick!

His illness helped along by . . . a person I shall not name

(I want to stay on his good side)

"Apple" got taken to the Apple Doctor, who advised us to leave her for she was really ill

So ill in fact she had to have surgery

Sigh, a week without my little "Apple"

(But I limped along with Husband Jim's old Chrome)

She arrived back hale and healthy

And when I tried to sign in to my blog,

it wouldn't let me

It didn't recognize my email

I couldn't understand why

I googled and searched and got to the blogger site

But, alas, nothing could tell me how to get into my blog

And then I remembered

I started the blog in 2008

I had a different server.

I had a different email.

But I couldn't remember what it was!

And tonight it all came back

So here I am again

But in the weeks since my last post . . . 

We had Christmas

The girls were enthralled by the Magical City of Scott

 I have many afternoon teas

(orange nutmeg madeleines are my tea nosh)

I've entertained

Returned the house to it's January bareness

(which means the Christmas tree is down and all the decorations are in bins in the basement)

Painted my kitchen island green

And recovered the breakfast room chairs (again!)

It's good to be back . . . I have weeks of stories to tell!