Sunday, June 2, 2013

What's up?


Boy did May fly by or what?  I cannot believe the last time I posted we were in Green Bay, WI.  Since that wonderful trip we've had many graduation open houses (lots of food), baby showers (more food), and two weddings (more food and drink).   For all this extra food and drink one might hope I'd done extra yoga. Sadly no.  I'm too tired from all that extra food and drink and over scheduling.

I  hosted book club two weeks ago, in fact the day after we returned from Green Bay.  I like to host book club with something special and this time in connection with our book, The Snow Child,  I made adult snow cones. If you've read this book you know the two mothers in the book often relax together with some homemade hootch and I replicated that idea with my own.  I took a little from several different online recipes, waded through many snow cone pins and came up with a basil-infused simple syrup, mixed with a lemon-lime vodka and a twist of raspberry puree mix to give it a two-toned affect.  Groovy Girl churned snow from ice cubes in a borrowed snow cone maker and I layered the mixture over.   We had about six or seven pre-made drinks served in martini glasses and waiting in the freezer for the guests to arrive.  This made it easy to hand them out as people shed their coats.  We'd also stock piled some extra "snow" so all I had to do was pour over the lemon-lime mixture and the fruit puree.

{source}
I did not take any pictures although I should have.  The book club members said they liked them and asked for more.  We had a great time discussing this book as we sipped our icy drinks.  We all liked the fairy tale quality mixed with the harsh background of 1930"s Alaska.  I look forward to more from Eowyn Ivey.  According to Good Reads she has another book in the works, something to do with wolves.  I hope that is another fairy tale connection.

{King Arthur Flour}
I also hosted the first annual Memorial Day waffle breakfast for my friends Rocky and Mary Kay.  The greatest part of hosting a casual brunch is that I stayed in my red plaid flannel pajamas for pretty much the whole day.  I'm not one to wear my comfy's all over town EVER but on a day off from school it just felt right.  The waffles were delicious.  My kids are little foodies when it comes to waffle or pancake toppings.  The middle of the table was filled with fresh whipped cream, syrup, my Pampered Chef sprinkler filled with powdered sugar, peanut butter, TJ's chocolate almond spread, a cinnamon shaker,  and a bowl of sliced, fresh strawberries with just a little bit of sugar sprinkled on top.  Oh, the possibilities were endless and you needed to have more than one waffle to try new combinations. The perfect a accompaniment was our white wine and orange juice mimosas served in new glasses, a gift from MK.

So we've been doing a lot of eating around here.  I have a hard core yoga boot camp planned for this week to counterattack.  Now that I'm technically done with school I can focus on other projects for a bit.  {jumping up and down mentally for the end of this school year}

After The Snow Child I read the ARC of The Real Boy by Anne Ursu (loved it) and Defending Jacob by William Landry (excellent mystery!) -all reviews to come.  My summer plan includes more reading mixed with my yoga boot camp.

Happy June!


3 comments:

Beth F said...

Icy drink on a hot day? Yes please. And great news that Evey is working on a new book.

JoAnn said...

Love the adult snow cone idea... may try that myself sometime this summer!

Laurie C said...

What a fun idea!