Monday, October 12, 2009

Pics from the Beach!










Thanks for sharing your house Lori!!! We missed you guys that couldn't come. Until next time...

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Book Club at the Beach!!!!!! Oct. 9!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Book Club Meeting this Thursday, Sept 24, at Sheri's house. Please let her know if you will NOT be there. We will be discussing A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Hey! Look over there!

Is it a bird!?!

Is it a plane!?!

NO! It's our upcoming Bookworm Bunch at the Beach Trip!!!

WOOOHOOOOOO!

(sorry, I just found this pic again and had to have an excuse to post it--Heehee! It's from our trip last year.)

p.s. Here's a couple pics I took at our last bookclub meeting. (I'm so sneaky with my camera phone!) We must've been deep in discussion because we don't look too thrilled.

At least Wendy and Kelly had a good time!

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Next book club has been changed to Sept. 24th at Sheri's house. We missed those of you who didn't make it to Selena's. We had a great discussion and lots of laughs!

Monday, August 24, 2009

Book Club...Aug.27th at Selena's. We will be discussing The Book Thief by Markus Zuszak. Please let her know if you will NOT be there.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Meeting...Thursday, July 30....7 pm...Dairy Queen.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

MEETING CHANGE!!!! 7 pm at Sheri's house. Please let everyone know.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Next meeting...Thursday, June 25 at Sally's. PLEASE let her know if you will NOT be there. We will be discussing Rule of Four

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

June

Thank you, Terry, for hosting in May! It was so fun to get together and to discuss May's book. Also, thank you for the wonderful strawberry shortcake.
The book for June is "The Rule of Four". We'll post meeting info later this month.
Happy reading!

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Book Club Meeting...7 pm tomorrow night, May 28, at Terry's. Please let her know if you will NOT be there. We will be discussing "These Is My Words" by Nancy Turner.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Eclairs

Okay, here is the eclair recipe I promised a few people. Seriously, it doesn't get better than this, people! I could die happy choking on one of these little lovelies. Oh, and I usually double the batter recipe and the chocolate drizzle recipe.

Eclair Batter
1 cup water
1 cup flour
1/2 cup butter
4 eggs

Heat over to 400 degrees. Heat water and butter to a rolling boil in a saucepan over med-high heat. Turn heat to low and stir in flour with a whisk. Stir constantly over low heat or until mixture forms a stiff ball.
Remove from heat and beat in the eggs all at one time until smooth and no longer runny in areas.
Drop dough in a tube shape (or pipe it from a pastry tube) on baking sheets covered with baking parchment paper and bake for 35-40 minutes or until golden, nearly weightless, and hollow sounding when tapped gently. Cool away from any drafts.
*Tip: Gently poke an end of each eclair with fork tines once they are removed from the oven to allow hot air to escape so it will dry and fluffy on the inside rather than wet and gooey.

Eclair Filling
(This should make enough to fill a doubled eclair recipe)
1 large package or instant vanilla pudding mix
2 1/2 cups cold milk
1 1/2 - 2 cups heavy whipping cream
1/4 cup confectioners sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
(this is a weird recipe. . . I do a lot of it to fit my own personal taste)

Combine pudding mix and milk in a seperate bowl. Beat cream until peaks form. Beat in confectioners sugar and vanilla. Beat again until stiff peaks form or until thick. Fold pudding into whipped cream. (I fold it in bit by bit until I think the taste is just right. I don't like it too pudding-ey so I usually withhold some of the pudding and use more cream.)
Once consistency and taste is what you want, slice an opening along the side of the cooled eclairs and fill with cream filling.

Chocolate Drizzle
(I double this.)
2 squares of semisweet chocolate
2 tbsp butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp hot water
1 cup confectioners sugar

Melt chocolate and 2 tbsp butter in saucepan over low heat. Stir in 1 cup confectioners sugar and 1 tsp vanilla. Stir in hot water, one tablespoon at a time until icing is smooth and has reached you personal desired consistency. Remove from heat, cool slightly, and drizzle over filled eclairs. . . unless you're like me and you want to douse your eclairs in chocolate. That's good too.

Refrigerate until serving and then, if you have no self control (like yours truly) eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, and as a midnight snack.

Fruit Salsa and Cinnamon Chips

I decided to come out of "blog hiding". And to prove it, I'll post some recipes that have been requested.
This recipe is actually an allrecipes.com recipe. I've altered it and included the alterations in my recipes below, but it's one of those recipes that you can really make all sorts of changes and it still tastes good. Experiment with it!

3 kiwis, peeled and diced
2 apples, peeled cored, and diced
1 (8 oz.) package of raspberries
1 pound strawberries, finely chopped
1 mango, pitted and diced
2 tablespoons white sugar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
3 tablespoons fruit preserves, any flavor


12 (or more) 10 inch flour tortillas
butter flavored cooking spray
2 cups cinnamon sugar

In a large bowl, mix all fruit, white sugar, brown sugar, and preserves. Cover and chill in the refrigerator at least 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. (This next step is important! Do NOT cut tortillas before you do this! I did that once and it was a giant pain in the tush.) Coat one side of each flour tortilla with butter flavored cooking spray. THEN cut into wedges and arrange on a baking sheet in a single layer. Sprinkle wedges with desired amount of cinnamon sugar. Spray once more with cooking spray.

Bake at 350 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes. Repeat with any remaining tortilla wedges. Allow to cool and then serve with chilled fruit salsa mixture.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Great Discussion! Fun Meeting! We missed all of you that couldn't make it. I still don't see any recipes posted! Melanie, thanks for the fruit salsa recipe. It seems to me that there were several people that needed to post the recipes from our January meeting. Is this enough of a push? If you don't know how to post I will do it for you but you have to get the recipe to me first.

Next book...These Is My Words.

Sheri

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Howdy!!! It's that time again. Our next meeting is April 30 at Melanie's. We will be discussing The Robe. Please RSVP to Melanie.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Boy oh BOY!

We need something new on here! So I'm just gonna type stuff so that there is some activity on this here blog of ours! From what I hear our next book, The Robe, is a thumbs up! It was made into a movie in 1953...just an fyi. I personally haven't even started it...don't even have a copy. We'll see how that goes. :) OH! I have an idea! Why don't we all put our favorite books up on here? Everyone just leave a comment on what their favorite book (or two or three) is. That's always an awesome way to find new reads or at least find ones that we have loved in the past and forgotten about. Enter your comments starting............NOW!

-C

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Book Club Meeting

March 12.....7 pm at Liz's.

We will be discussing Silas Marner and Anytime, Any Minute

Please let Liz know if you will NOT be there.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Post-bookclub post

Hey everyone!

Our bookclub this week was grrrreat! We had a great turnout and missed a few who couldn't be there. I still haven't finished the book (I'm bad I know) but I will. I think for the most part Blue Castle got a thumbs up. I finished the rest of the apple crisp for breakfast this morning. YUM! Now on to Anytime Any Minute and/or Silas Marner! (Right?)

Thanks for coming everyone!

-C

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Hi, everybody!

Meeting: February 26

Where: Carrie's

When: 7 pm

Why: Discuss The Blue Castle

Saturday, January 31, 2009

February Meeting


Okay - so I'm finally getting around to doing this. Sorry about dropping the ball.
Because Hunger Games isn't available in February, it has been moved to June. Instead, in February, we'll be reading "The Rule of Four" by Ian Caldwell. We'll meet at Carrie's house on the 26th and we'll be discussing "The Rule of Four" as well as "The Blue Castle". T.B.C. is a really quick, easy read and I have a book I can pass around and Liz has one as well. While we're waiting for a turn with it, we could get some copies of T.R.o.F. and start reading and passing around that. I'll see what the library has available today.
In the meantime, I'm going to try and figure out how to post a couple of "extras" on the blog.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Let's decide for sure...

...on what we're doing/reading for February. I know we've emailed but I don't know that anyone has made a decision. Should we post in the comments of this post what our vote is or am I just being redundant?


Hunger Games has to be postponed. There are almost 50 holds on it at the library.

Blue Castle ... we're also having a hard time getting. Not nearly 50 holds but still. Do you all think we can pass enough copies around to have it read by February?



This is very serious business. Let's act appropriately.

Especially you Liz. Wipe that smile off your face.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

The blog looks great. Thanks, Melanie, for the hard work. I have Blue Castle coming to me from the library but it is taking a long time to get here. We can figure out more details at the February meeting.

January/February

For the month of January, we're going to be reading The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery. It might be a little difficult to get ahold of but it's available on amazon.com for around two to three dollars. It looks like we'll be meeting in February to discuss the book because The Hunger Games isn't available and the original day we planned on meeting in January had other conflicting activities scheduled. I'll post the day we'll be meeting a little later along with the recipe for the cinnamon chips and fruit salsa we had at the last meeting. If anyone else would like to post their recipes, they'd be more than welcome to (cough - Selena - cough).