Looks Like Fun: A Mid-day "Cocktail" Party

There's never a dull moment with The Friendly Cooks! In addition to cackling and snorting, we like to introduce each other to new food techniques and ideas. Recently I've been finding things to snack on that give me the feeling that I'm treating myself without adding too much to my calorie count. Olives are great for both these goals. My local grocery store carries all kinds of special ones, and I especially like the ones stuffed with garlic and jalepeno peppers. So for our cooking day I introduced the group to a variety of olives, low-fat cheeses, high-fiber crackers, and Virgin Mary cocktails. We put on our flowery aprons and had a mid-day pause that only seemed self-indulgent. Here's the recipe:

Virgin Mary Recipe

Scale ingredients to the number of servings:

4 oz. tomato juice
1 dash lemon juice
1/2 tsp. worcestershire sauce
2 drops tabasco sauce

Fill a large wine glass with ice. Add tomato juice, then the rest of the ingredients. Stir and garnish with a wedge of lime (or celery).

Recipe: Italian Meatball Soup

This is a quicker adaptation of a much more complicated recipe. Every time I make it everyone asks for the recipe, and since it's easy to double or triple it's a favorite for winter gatherings at our house. If you're cooking this recipe with friends you have very little to prepare ahead, as only the vegetables take any work.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 C diced yellow onion
• 3/4 C diced celery
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
• 1 T olive oil
• 2 15-1/2 oz. cans ready-cut tomatoes
• 8 C beef broth
• 12 oz. beer
• 2 sliced zucchini
• 1/2 package farfalle pasta
• 2 t italian seasoning, or some combination of basil/rosemary/oregano
• 1/2 package Trader Joe's frozen flame-broiled meatballs in blue package (if you don't live near a TJ's you can use any kind of frozen meatballs; the seasoning in them will add to the flavor of the soup)

Directions:

Saute onion, celery, and garlic in olive oil until tender. Add tomatoes, beef broth, and beer and bring to boil. Add pasta and simmer until almost done. Cook meatballs in microwave for 2-3 minutes (until warm), and cut into fourths. Add meatballs and zucchini to soup and cook until pasta and zucchini are done. Serve with grated parmesan cheese.

How It Works

First we pick a date. Initially I was hoping that we could whip through a month's worth of meals in a morning, and really I think we could, but it wouldn't be much fun. We have found that it really takes a whole school day to do it right.

We each shop for and prep 2 meals for 4 families and get our kitchens ready to cook in. Then, in an order that depends on what we feel like doing or the demands of planned recipes, we travel from house to house snacking, cooking, and talking. This works well for us because we live fairly close together, but it also works just fine to have 3 people haul all their stuff to one house and do all the cooking there. The only real issue is having enough table or counter space on which to place our delicious meals before we take them home.

Often, the first kitchen hostess will fix a little something for breakfast and the last will fix a little something for lunch. Usually, someone has included a trip to Costco in her preparation and will grab some chicken salad or a loaf of bread to make lunch prep easier. After all, we just cooked 8 meals!

Each kitchen hostess has her workspace organized for the meals she has planned, and has 4 copies of her recipes in plastic sheet protectors to pass out. She assigns the tasks at hand (one of us might brown meat while another chops parsley and another measures liquid ingredients into freezer bags) and keeps things moving at a fast clip. When most of the tasks are completed, attention is turned to doing the dishes and taking out the trash so that each kitchen is left tidy and welcoming for the tired cook at the end of the day.

If the weather's warm it can be handy to bring an ice chest or insulated shopping bag to keep food fresh in, but often we'll just zip home and drop things off in between kitchens.

As we've become more experienced we've learned which types of prep are best done ahead of time and which work well with the group. We've also learned that there are just times when you deserve a gold medal for arriving at all (once, after another trip to urgent care for stitches due to prepping my meal too fast, I showed up at the first kitchen, burst into tears, and went straight to take a bath in the hostess's bathtub). Cooking with friends requires humor and grace!

How It All Started

Long, long ago, an acquaintance of mine from out of state mentioned that she and a friend spent one day a month making gourmet meals to freeze for both families. She said their babies would play nicely together on a blanket on the floor while the women researched delicious recipes and their suitability for freezing.

That sounded good to me, and I kept trying to get someone to try it with me even though I did not have the kind of babies that sat quietly on a blanket while I sprinted to the bathroom, much less pored over cookbooks. Finally I convinced my friend Elizabeth, proving that she was a true friend because in reality her husband enjoys cooking and she didn't have to cook every meal anyway. Still, we got our groceries and recipes together, combined our 5 kids (hoping my baby would nap) and started in. I picked up a fresh carrot and an even more freshly sharpened knife... and immediately cut off most of the end of my thumb! I calmly lifted it above my heart, as one is told to, and announced to Elizabeth that we would be needing to visit the emergency room as soon as possible.

Needless to say, we did not continue the experiment. In fact, now that I think about it, I'm not even sure what happened to those groceries (my thumb is fine, though). It would be many a year that I would cook alone before I ventured to cook in company again.

Once the baby that I had hoped would nap during that ill-fated cooking date had turned 10 and had a little sister who was 7 in addition to a 12-year-old brother, I was sick and tired of figuring out what to feed these people by myself. They were hungry for good, solid food, and I was hungry for good, solid friendship. If I could combine the two I'd be a happy girl.

At the time I lived very close to 3 really good friends. We had prayed together as part of our school's Moms In Touch group and had labored through the ups and downs of our combined 10 children for years. Additionally, we had cackled like fiends (except for one of us who snorts, but more about her later) at any number of twisted jokes and crazy situations, and I knew these were gals I could trust and have fun with.

So I suggested it. Would anyone be interested in cooking together once a month? Why... YES! They were interested. And the train was in motion.