Office holiday potluck

I am very fortunate to work with people who appreciate food as much as I do - and they also happen to be very good at sharing! :) In the past, we've gone out to lunch as an office to celebrate the holidays, but this year we decided to have a staff potluck, so we each made something and brought it in and had a family-style lunch.* Here's how it all turned out!

I made a Midwestern holiday favorite: corn casserole. It mystifies non-Midwesterners because it's very hard to describe!

Karen brought several types of crackers and myriad things to eat with / spread on them. This was classic cheddar.

A Frobig family favorite: cream cheese with pepper jelly - YUM!

What's a holiday party without a mini cheese ball and some olive patè??

Damion('s wife) made an amazing sweet potato chick pea chowder.

Samantha brought cranberry pear cobbler and vanilla ice cream.

Samantha gave us each a little jar of homemade blueberry jelly made from blueberries she picked herself - so sweet!

*This was especially appropriate since we are very much like a dysfunctional family.

Ethel's first job

So...I finally got around to using Ethel for the first time (that sounds really funny...), and she did a GREAT job! We made carrot cake together. :) For this special event, I made some videos of her in action. Here she is mixing the wet cake ingredients with the dry:

And here she is mixing the cream cheese frosting:

By the way...I've discovered that the longer she mixes the frosting, the creamier it gets! I know this seems really intuitive, but I honestly hadn't even thought about it until this time (I've made this cake at least 20 times...). I suppose there is probably a window of time after which the frosting becomes super rigid or something, but I haven't found the other end of that (yet)! :)

Kettle

I always thought tea kettles were for little old ladies. Then, I lived with J Word (who kind of is a little old lady) for awhile and got really into things like hot tea and using a tea kettle to boil water for oatmeal and instant soup mix. :) Last year, when we parted ways, she took her fancy Paul Revere tea kettle, but in an unexpected twist of fate, she gave me a "housewarming present" (yep, that's exactly what she called it) which was the exact same tea kettle (she's known to have 2 or 3 of things...it's a vintage/yard-saling/hoarding thing)!

So, I took that Paul Revere housewarming tea kettle to my new place, and it never did quite fit in here. It sat on the stove and just looked totally out of place. It made my kitchen look like our old kitchen, that was NOT ok. And, as if this wasn't enough, I never even used the damn thing. No, actually, that's not true. I used it a few times - mostly to heat water for tea when I was sick, but that was really the only thing I ever used it for. So - I decided to sell it at Kim & Jen's fabulous amazing driveway/sidewalk sale this summer. Yay! I think I got $10 for it, I can't remember. The point is that I sold it (thanks, J Word), and then of course every time I turned around I was in desperate need of a tea kettle.

Enough finally became enough, and I hunted around ebay for a nice tea kettle (a youthful one, for a vivacious 30-something, not a cast iron Paul Revere tea kettle for an octogenarian!). I found this cool Kitt Amore (never hear of 'em before this) number, and I fell in love! I paid $19.99 for it, and it came to me all the way from Chicago. It arrived tonight, and I couldn't be happier! I can't wait to have tea!