Friday's Festivities

Late night, lying on the guest room bed... Mary and I stayed up after people left talking and now we've moved upstairs and continue to talk as she gets ready for bed. Tonight we had dinner, presents, dessert, talk. Everyone will be back tomorrow for brunch.

On with the slide show:


This is Emily who is staying with Mary as she looks for a job and she left to spend the weekend with a friend late this afternoon. She had run out to the deli to get us lunch and here we are at lunch.



These are my favorite mushrooms, the recipe for which comes from Cristina Worden who some of you know. They are so easy and so good. You melt butter in a pan. You brush (not wet) the mushrooms until they are clean and then cut them. You dust the mushrooms with flour -- we stuck them in a plastic grocery bag and shook the flower on them. Then you cook them until they are golden brown, have a slight coating. Then you add heavy cream -- I think I added about -- oh, just under a cup... you add a splash of soy sauce and salt and pepper to taste. They really are good.



Meredith made a carrot cake which was wonderful, and she put the cream cheese frosting on here.

 

This is the gathering for the cookie exchange. The packaging varies from plastic wrap to the fancy Christmas Chinese food cartons (FRAN). So we each get about six cookies times five people. I am not ashamed, but should be, that I'm the only one who bought my cookies. Everyone else made theirs. In years past, Mary's nephew Matt came over to the dark side with me, but this year one of his students was selling cookie dough as a fundraiser so he bought the dough and baked it, which I believe does qualify as home made. Me? I sent Marilyn, my helper, to the bakery when she was at my place on Wednesday. I did put them in individual little packets by myself... does that count?


 

We had shrimp cocktail as an appetizer and I forgot to take a picture until I only had three shrimp left. But Mary finds this good frozen shrimp and then bakes it with olive oil salt and pepper... and then made the sauce, or rather doctored the commercial sauce with hot sauce and horseradish. They were really good.

 

This is my plate with meat loaf, mushrooms, corn and mashed potatoes.



And this is Matt's plate... Mary also made a pork tenderloin (hey, no one should go home hungry) and Matt preferred that. Plus he had salad, which I had later, and Meredith had brought bread.



I'm not quite sure what this is, but this is a Vera Bradley bag that Meredith's mother had sent to Mary (along with the basket that Michelle had bought in Africa on vacation). We were passing all the presents around for closer examination, and I think Fran was modeling the Vera Bradley bag.

 

I gave Meredith two maps to South Africa since she and Dave are headed there for Meredith's job for four years right after New Year's. They will live in Pretoria.

 

Fran bought this apple pie for dessert, and Dave did the manly thing with the too-hard ice cream so we each got a taste of ice cream with our pie.



And here's Meredith's carrot cake --- one of my favorites -- and it was so moist and so good.

ON TO BRUNCH TOMORROW...