The Luckiest Girl in the World! Me!

Today I took a moment to look around our living room and kitchen during Sunday Soup and I was truly stunned by our blessings. Two years ago, The Southerner and I moved here and didn't know anyone. Today our house overflowed with friendship, food, love, and laughter. And as if that wasn't great enough, I now have a three piece jazz band playing in my living room. Everyone else has gone home, but the trio's just getting started - oh, wait...apparently we're losing the horn player right after this song. Oh, well, a handful of songs is still pretty great. Not everyone has a jazz guitar, trombone, and upright bass concert all to themselves! And apparently, neither do I for much longer. But I do have a die-hard bass player (The Fix-it Guy) and the guitar/singer (The Southerner) for more music!

The potluck was a great success and I learned something very important. If you make two soups, and you only make a small batch of one of them, that is the one that everyone will love! Not that they turned up their noses at my original recipe squash, ginger, and apple cider soup, but truly the Chocolate Chili was the sure winner. It went so fast I had to hide the empty crockpot so that the latecomers wouldn't know they'd missed it. Yes, that's right. Chocolate Chili. The recipe came from How to Cook Practically Everything Vegetarian. Of course, I made a few adjustments. I added a chipotle pepper and some adobo sauce to give it a kick. And I didn't have any plain dark chocolate so I added orange dark chocolate. It was made with black beans, onions, tomatoes, water and seasonings. Yum.

The Crowd was so big that I can't name everyone, so I won't name anyone. There were several people who had never come before either, so it was nice to finally get them here. I hope they'll all come back. This was truly a wonderful day and The Southerner and I are so happy to be part of this community. Thank you for having us. And come back next week!

P.S. The Sous Chef had to go to a horse show this weekend, so she didn't come for a cooking lesson, but she did send me this picture of our cannolis from last week. She took it on her phone, so it's sideways. You'll just have to turn your head (or your computer). The dough is wrapped around wooden dowels that we had cut at the building supply store and then sanded ourselves (thank you internet for the tip!). By the way, The Southerner LOVED them! But like he said, "Cannolis...what's not to love?"