Janet made her special chocolate chip cookies. They are the best I’ve ever eaten.

I could not resist eating both. Delicious and pretty too.

Lynda has recently retired and she is on a crafting bender. I can’t believe how much she gets done. Lynda and Viv have gotten hooked on these knitted bracelets. I think they are terrific and I want to learn how to make them and I don’t want to learn how to make them all at the same time. I’ve got so many projects to finish and I just can’t afford to get hooked on something new.

Lynda made the purple necklace and bracelet to wear to a wedding and they look so nice. It is wonderful to hang out with such talented women.

I left South Carolina after my sophomore year of college and since then, our lives have gone down very different roads. We have kept up with each other all these years, but the only spent time together is when I’ve been back south to visit family.

This week Kitty came out to Portland for work and stayed an extra three days so we could hang out. It’s been just great. There is so much warmth and history between us and we’ve just picked up right where we left off.

When I asked Kitty what she wanted to do while she was in Portland, her response was “Eat and Hike” Request granted! Yesterday we went to Pok Pok for lunch. If you live here and haven’t been there, it’s a must. Pok Pok serves Thai food and was voted Portland’s restaurant of the year in 2007.

Delicious coconut cocktails! I mean, it’s vacation, right?!

Full and happy after a great lunch.

Today we headed out to the gorge to satisfy the hiking request. I decided on Eagle Creek because it’s the quintessential gorge hike. We got there early and had a perfect day.

After our hike, we headed back to Portland and stopped at Fleur De Lis for a sandwich. It’s one of the best bakeries in the city and it didn’t disappoint today. And tonight for dinner, the whole family was here and Ricked cooked a great dinner: green beans with heirloom tomatoes, fennel and apricot salad, roasted potatoes and grilled pork loin chops. Everything was locally sourced and delicious. We all sat around the table until well after dark chatting and laughing. Perfect ending to a great day.

Look at all this wonderful food.

Janet made the enchiladas and I must say they were divine. Susan made a great lemon cake with strawberries on top.

Friends, food and laughter, what more could one ask for? !

We’ve been looking for recipes and the Oregonian recently had an article about Olive Oil cakes in their food section. I tried the recipe by Danielle Pruett who is the pastry chef at Clyde Common. It turned out great. Very moist with a kind of sponge cake texture.

The cake needed something to complement it and with rhubarb in season, that was the obvious choice. Plus, I’m in love with rhubarb right now, just can’t get enough. To make the rhubarb compote, I chopped up 4 – 5 stalks into 1 inch pieces and put them in a saucepan with 1/4 cup water and 1/4 cup of sugar. Bring the heat to simmering and cook for about 10 minutes. The rhubarb should become all mushy with no hard pieces remaining. This time I added some minced candied ginger which gave it a nice extra punch.

Now you can add some compote on top of the olive oil cake and YUM YUM! Maybe a scoop of vanilla ice cream too.

Today we had the annual New Year’s brunch with our SWIRL (Society for Wine Inbibing Radical Liberals) group. Ruth hosted the brunch and set a lovely table. Southern was the theme for the food this year, somehow due to the fact that I said I would bring my cheese grits casserole. (Thanks, mom!) Everyone else made delicious food to go with it. We had ham, black eyed peas, collard greens, broccoli rabe and fruit salad.

For dessert, Jewel made wonderful homemade cinnamon rolls and Gene and Katie made beignets. OMG! I ate so much. I managed to restrain myself to one cinnamon roll, but I had to eat two beignets. Yum.

Jewel found the “baby” in her beignet so she is Queen of the SWIRL for the year. There was lots of laughter, conversation and great food. I can’t wait for the next gathering.

They are beautiful to look at as well as amazingly delicious. I managed to restrain myself and only eat one right then. I’m just about to eat number two. Will I share? Maybe, maybe not.

Have a happy Thanksgiving tomorrow.

My friend Anne gave me a whole bag of fresh figs from her tree so I decided to make fig newtons. I found a recipe on line here, the only problem was that it called for dried figs. So I improvised. I cut up my figs into small pieces, put them in a saucepan with some water, grated orange peel, and sugar and cooked them on low for about an hour and a half until they were really cooked down and thick.  I followed the online recipe for the dough and it worked great. They taste terrific, just like store bought only better.

More baking was called for because it’s peach season and so time for a peach pie. I used a dough from a very old issue of Cook’s Illustrated that has a little sour cream in the dough. It’s a bit hardier than regular pie dough and so stands up to the juiciness of a peach pie. The filling is peaches, sugar, flour, a pinch of mace and some lemon juice. Yum Yum.

Fruit and dough equals breakfast don’t you think?

I make the dough in my mini food processor in the morning, wrap it and put it in the fridge and it’s ready to roll out, fill, and bake at dinner time.To make the dough for one galette, put one cup of flour, one teaspoon of sugar and 1/4 teaspoon of salt into your food processor. Pulse to mix. Add 6 tablespoons of cubed, COLD butter. Pulse till it gets crumbly. Add 3 tablespoons of ICE water and pulse just till it sticks together. Transfer to a floured work surface and just knead 2 or 3 times till it’s smooth and forms a ball. Wrap in plastic and put in the frig for a couple of hours. The key to great dough is to keep it cold so don’t take it out of the frig until the very last minute. 

This rolling pin was a wedding present and it always makes me happy to use it.  Roll out your dough into a  12 inch circle that’s mostly round. Pile your filling into the center and then simply fold the edges of the dough over the filling. My filling here is swiss chard and beet greens cooked with bacon, onions and a dab of balsamic vinegar. 

I brush the dough with a little milk so it gets nice and flakey when it bakes. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 30 – 45 minutes and you’ve got something wonderful to eat. 

So when you’re at the market this weekend, look at those peaches, greens, berries, squash and think about a galette.

The quilt on the left is by Jennifer and the one on the right is by Heather. 

This quilt is by Susan. The three squares on the right are watercolors that she has added onto the quilt. 

This is Elaine’s quilt. She chose “Three Cups of Tea” and offered us the option of making a quilt about an issue that was important to us.  Elaine feels strongly about the wall the US is building along our border with Mexico. She posits that building schools in Mexico would be much more helpful in solving some of the immigration problems than building a wall.

This is Vivienne’s quilt and it represent the importance of recycling. It’s a green mobius strip made up of pieced arrows. I love it. 

Two of the other quilts from Three Cups of Tea were quilted by me and I’ve blogged about Judy’s and Carole’s previously.