Fall Flowers for Parties and More!

The Make and Take Gals get ready for celebrating this Fall!

Jean hosted our lovely morning of catching up on all the Make and Take Gals' news since our last gathering. Lots of stories of summer travels, our grown children's adventures and plans for the new Fall season over tea and apple bread... yummy!

Our craft of paper flowers brought back memories of making these paper puff balls from our childhood. The perfect craft to allow us to focus on our conversations!

We took 8 to 12 layers of tissue, depending on the size ball we wanted, alternated colors in a stack and then made one inch accordions; tied off with a ribbon so that we had a loop to attach the fishing line to allowing us to easily hang them.

With our goody bags packed with festive flowers ready to be fluffed up at our next celebration, we moved on to a delicious lunch that had all the flavors of Fall! Jean, you knocked it out of the park again! Our surprising table favor was a darling tea bag of broth! We had never seen these before.  Check them out HERE!

For Jean's lunch recipes, see the recipe section for links to her delicious choices! Thank you Jean for a wonderful day!

 

(To die for Vegetarian African Peanut Soup and 

Arugula, Carrot & Chickpea Salad)

                                                                    (Pumpkin Cake)

We hope you will be inspired to try some Fall meals and decorating! 

Until next month, be well!

 RECIPES

For the Vegetarian African Peanut Soup, I used the tomato paste and did add two small sweet potatoes to the broth as suggested.

http://cookieandkate.com/2013/west-african-peanut-soup/ 

Apple Crumb Cake

http://www.errenskitchen.com/apple-crumb-cakes/

Pumpkin Cake

http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2013/09/22/iced-pumpkin-coffee-cake/

Arugula, Carrot & Chickpea Salad

https://www.prracer.com/content/arugula-carrot-and-chickpea-salad

Hoot Owl PB & Chocolate Cookies for Thanksgiving!

This month's Make&Take was hosted by Pam, and as always she dazzled us with her baking creativity! Are these the cutest cookies ever! Our Halloween Day session was complete with every detail to get us into the Fall spirit! A touch of Halloween and a cookie recipe to carry us through to Thanksgiving!

Hoot Owl Cookies

From Joann's recipes 

1 cup of brown sugar

1 cup of white sugar

3/4 cup of peanut butter

3/4 cup of margarine or butter

Cream the sugars and butters together

Add :

3 eggs (one at a time)

2 teaspoons of vanilla

Blend well.

Add:

4 teaspoons of baking powder

1 1/4 teaspoons  of salt.

4 and 1/2cups of flour

(1 cup of flour at a time)

Mix well and  then make into a ball.

Take off 1/3 off the ball and add 5 tablespoons of cocoa with it to make the chocolate part of the owl.   Blend well.

Roll out the chocolate cookie dough into a log that is 20 inches long.  

Make the vanilla dough into a log and then flatten it out into a 4 inch by 20 inch long rectangle.

Lay the chocolate cookie dough in the center of the vanilla dough and wrap the vanilla dough around the chocolate dough.  Then roll the dough on the counter gentle until it is rounded and smooth.

Cut in  1/8 to 1/4 inch slices.

Take two slices and lay them side by side on cookie sheet.  (place them tightly together).  Pinch the top corners to form the ears of the owl.

You will need a can of cashew nuts to use for the beak of the owl.

Put a cashew in the center of the two cookies to form the beak.

For the owls eyes.  You will need 4 ounces of cream cheese.  I put the cream cheese in a pastry bag and use a # 3 tube to put a dot for the white of the eye.

You will need a bag of chocolate chip for the pupil of the eye.  Place one chocolate chip on the dot of cream cheese and press down gentle.

Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes.  Remove from heat and cool on rack.

Make 3 dozen.

While we were waiting for the owls to bake up, Pam provided a wonderful Fall lunch. It was Halloween Day so we had black and orange cheese ravioli with her famous pumpkin ragout sauce, delish! Then darling brownie ala mode with chocolate spiders.

  

These cute little favors are Halloween s'mores. Package 2 graham crackers, 2 small individual snack size Hershey bars, a one darling ghost marshmallow peep on top. The perfect party favor! 

Pumpkin Sauce Recipe for Pasta

Original recipe makes 4 servings Change Servings

• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 3 tablespoons minced sweet onion
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1 cup pumpkin puree
• 2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, chopped

• 1/3 cup low-fat milk
• 1 teaspoon ground sage
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1 pinch ground cinnamon
• 1 pinch ground nutmeg

Directions

1. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat, and cook and stir the onion and garlic until the onion is translucent, about 3 minutes. Whisk in the chicken broth, and bring to a boil; whisk in the pumpkin puree, chipotle peppers and their sauce, milk, sage, salt, coriander, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Allow sauce to come to a simmer, then lower heat to hold at a simmer until serving time.

September Make and Take Warms Up With Jean's Homespun Fall Treats!

 

 Fall has rolled into Portland with a chilly change to the season. After a deliciously long and hot summer, the brisk pumpkin weather took us by surprise. Our hostess, Jean, however planned for the transition in this month's Make and Take. With her skillful direction we revisited the cozy fleece blanket project and produced a splash of fall color blankets to cover our families in.













In addition we made a festive and beautiful Autumn Nut Bark that is insanely good!

No visit to Jean's house would be complete without testing out some delicious new salad recipes. Lunch was devine! Thank you Jean!

 Recipe can be found at http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/bobby-flay/greek-quinoa-salad-recipe/index.html

October Make & Take Spicey and Pumpkin Sweet!

 The Make and Take Gals met at Pam's this month for a festive session of pumpkin and falls delights. We started our session with Lunch. Pam made delicious Pumpkin French Toast with Apple Cider Syrup and Spiced Pecans... I know right! Amazing, and it only gets better from there.

After devouring the breakfast lunch we moved right into the Brownie and darling donuts-hole acorn treats. We packed those up to take home...

 For the donuts-hole acorns take some chocolate frosting and swirl one end of the donuts-hole , then roll in jimmies and nuts and stick half a pretzel in the top.

Next up we made shower discs for colds. These are the coolest. You put one in the shower out of the stream of water but where it will be splashed, and as the steam builds the eucalyptus, lavender and rosemary vapor fills the shower and soothes what ails you.

 Recipe: Take one box of baking soda and add 1/4 cup water at a time until it all sticks together. Be sure not to make it too wet as it will take a long time to dry. Add 5 drops each of the essential oils, blend and fill cupcake papers. 1 box should make 3-4 discs. You can then leave them on the counter to dry or bake them for 10 min in a 325 degree oven. Wonderful care package item or gathered in a basket in your guest bath!

 Our final project involved chocolate and lots of it. Chocolate Pumpkin Bark and Salted Caramel Pretzel Bark. After making them I put my in the freezer for a bit and they broke up beautifully. I then put them in simple little bags for gift giving.

 One wonderful fall afternoon with the gals! Thank you Pam!

Make and Take, Novemeber 4, 2010

October 2010 Make and Take

Another wonderful event at Pam's!  She had us making mini-pumpkin cheesecakes with a ribbon of butter pecan crunch...yummers!  We took them home to freeze and use for our fall events!

For lunch, she made delicious pumpkin sauce pasta with hazelnuts on top.

Making butter pecan brittle to decorate the top of the cheese cakes. Another successful gathering!

~ MJ
Copyright 2010 MJ's Table Talk

Make and Take, October 17, 2009

October Make and Take Shakes It Up!

Friday was another fun and barely successful Make and Take. This gathering was at my house and the projects were Autumn Trail Mix and Homemade cards. Marci, a past member was able to join in the fun and catch us up on all she has been doing.

We started with shaking up our trail mix with candy corn to add a little color and surprise. I adapted the recipe from Martha Stewart.

Autumn Trail Mix

1 cup roasted pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup roasted almonds
1/4 cup dried blueberries
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup candy corn
1/2 unsweetened flake coconut
1/4 cup sunflowerseeds

Mix it all together and fill glass jars. Secure lids and decorate with fall embellishments!

We also revisited a M&T that Jean offered a few months ago on card making. We each needed new supplies and wanted to create some gift sets for the holidays. This almost didn't happen when my paper cutter decided it was finished with performing...Jean saved the day by retrieving her industrial cutter and we produced quite a little stash!









For lunch I made a traditional Peruvian dish called Carapulcra with rice and Butternut squash soup. We enjoyed pumpkin pie and caramel dipped pear and apple for dessert...yummers! My favorite little fall twist was a batch of Hot Vanilla Apple Cider. This was also an adaption from Martha Stewart.

Vanilla Apple Cider

1 Gallon fresh apple cider
2 whole nutmeg
1 vanilla bean, split and scrapped
2 tblsp of brown sugar
Bourbon is optional

Place all ingredients in pot over medium heat. Bring to boil and sift hot cider into mugs and set nuts and bean aside.

Deliciously rich and unexpected flavors!

Thanks gals for another lovely day together!

~ MJ
Copyright 2009 MJ's Table Talk