Please visit our Mennonite Girls Can Cook site to read about pre-order announcements and a book giveaway.
The excitement of Katie’s arrival, our small group meal, and other events on the horizon have made me slow in visiting. It will probably take a day or two for me to re-surface. Hope all is well in your corner of the world.
Pam’s blog is Abiding With Love.
Thank you Pam for entering my giveaway and for being a faithful follower of my blog. I’ll email you for your address and will mail off a copy of our new book as soon as they are published and in my hands.
In Celebration of over 1,000,000 hits on my blog I’m giving away our new Celebrations Cookbook to one of you who leave a comment on this post. Oops!! I forgot to mention that the giveaway will close Saturday night and I’ll announce the winner on Monday!
In March of 2007 my brother Steve sat me down and told me he was going to help me start my own blog since I was enjoying visiting so many. Since that time I have learned so much and I understand a few more things about my computer. One of the best things that has happened from my blogging experience are the new friendships I’ve enjoyed. Meeting some of these friends in person has been such a special blessing. One of my meetings resulted in a walking buddy for the years that Dear and I were living in Camarillo, California. Now that we are back in Washington, I miss my walking buddy, Willow.
During my blogging I stumbled upon Lovella’s blog and noticed that she baked Paska at Easter time. I was curious because being from a Russian Immigrant family we always had this same Easter treat year after year. I started following her blog and soon realized a lot of her recipes were similar to the Russian recipes my mom made in our kitchen. Soon Lovella decided to start a cooking blog where recipes were posted every day. She asked if I’d like to contribute. I started slow but then became more regular when I embraced this fun concept and my responsibility of being a contributor. Over the course of time the Mennonite Girls Can Cook Blog was cemented with 10 contributors and I was one of the 10. After this point Lovella was contacted by Menno Media with the idea of a Mennonite Girls Can Cook cookbook. The ten of us met for the first time all together in Canada and signed a contract and got to work. Even though I’m the one contributor of the 10 that is not Mennonite or Canadian, I’ve been embraced and accepted as their “Russian American Cousin”.
Our first cookbook has been a fun venture and has afforded the 10 of us the opportunity to share all of our royalties to build a greenhouse at the Good Shepherd Shelter in the Ukraine. From the beginning we as the authors agreed that we have all we need and we wanted to help those less fortunate with our portion of profits from our book. The whole story of the Mennonite/Ukranian/ Canadian connection is explained in the book and on our blog. Our first book is still available and you can click over to the Mennonite Girls Can Cook Blog to see where the book can be purchased. It is also available at Amazon.
This is the greenhouse at the Good Shepherd Shelter in the Ukraine. They are already growing food year round in the greenhouse!
Our 2nd cookbook will be published May 1st of this year. For our 2nd book our author royalties will again go to a mission project that we are deciding on together. The photo above was taken during our time together to sign the contract for our 2nd book. These 9 wonderful women of faith have become my partners and dear friends all because of my little blog. Who could have ever dreamed this? It is amazing what God has given to me through “The Happy Wonderer” I wonder who I’ll meet in the future?
We are excited about our new book and the themes and recipes included this time around. I really love the cover and am looking forward to seeing all the recipes and photos put together and having the hard copy in my hands!
If you leave a comment and are chosen for my giveaway please understand that I won’t be sending you our new cookbook till May of this year. Besides your comment you will need to leave a reliable email address so I can contact you to get an address to mail the book. Your email address won’t be visible to anyone but me. Thank you to all my regular readers and bloggy friends for supporting me with your kind thoughts and comments. I appreciate all of you!
Speaking of leftovers here are the rest of the photos from our Elliott Bay Marina brunch at Palisade Restaurant.
Palisade is on the second level of this building with great views of Elliott Bay and part of downtown Seattle in the distance.
Our family all together. I’m going to have to get more creative in 2013 with group shots. I’ve seen a couple good ideas on Facebook.
See what I mean. I think the only thing that changed in this shot is the position of my hands. I do weird things with my hands in photos.
By now you are tired of us so look behind us and check out the Space Needle and downtown Seattle.
We positioned my nephew Caleb in this shot to make sure he didn’t block the view of the Space Needle!
My nephew Caleb and his girlfriend Marie. They both graduated from Westmont College in the Santa Barbara area this past May. She’s working on her teaching credential and he’s working at a church in Santa Barbara with the youth. It was fun to have them with us for brunch before they headed back to Santa Barbara. On the day Caleb was born our son Joshua hit a homerun in his honor at a little league game. Joshua and Caleb…that rings a bell. They have been strong and courageous!
Had to include a shot with the new shoes. Andrew and Katie still behave like newlyweds…
On the way home we got closer to the needle but we were driving fast so it’s a bit blurry.
Tonight our Newlyweds fly back to the east coast. My little nest will be empty again. I took down Christmas on New Year’s Day. I had to make room in the living room once again since our small group meetings start back up on Thursday. We had a real laid back New Year’s Day and ordered pizza in for dinner. The night ended with 4 of the kids playing Settlers of Catan. Dear and I hit the sack early as usual.
Hope 2013 is starting well for all of you!
We crossed the U.S./Canadian border at Sumas and the border agents didn’t confiscate my Smirntopf or my Antispasto platter so all was good. We arrived to Judy and Elmer’s home all decked out beautifully for Christmas.
Not all the girls could be there that night. Our eastern Canadian girls, Betty and Charlotte, got together in Manitoba for their own party this night.
We took care of some serious business first before we set out all the dishes of food. Judy put together a fun getting to know you game where we had to connect each of the guests to an obscure fact or experience that guest had in their life. It was not easy but before too very long Kathy was the first to figure it all out. Having a sea lion visit visit him in his backyard, falling into a manure pit, kayaking the Cayes and jungles of Belize, assisting drunken hitchhikers, were just a few of the interesting experiences. We were sworn to secrecy for one of the experiences we heard about! Next was the White Elephant exchange where we behaved quite civilly except when it came to the basket of fresh eggs!
The guys headed upstairs to play the popular Canadian game called Crokinole while we girls warmed up and set out the dishes we brought to share.
Oh My!…
I wonder if there will be enough food!? We were chuckling about the fact that food abundance is never an issue when you invite the girls to bring a dish!
Judy created that cute Christmas tree cheese platter. I’m sure a duplicate will appear somewhere at another blogdom Christmas party!
So…do you think we’ll have enough? Don’t forget we still haven’t put out the desserts!!
We let our husbands go first and they enjoyed what they saw and dug in heartily.
The “Girls” got to sit around the table set perfectly for the 8 of us.
After our fill of the savories it was on to dessert, oh my!
Judy made this beautiful punch for us to enjoy and Lovella made some homemade Egg Nog.
Her recipe was on the MGCC blog yesterday if you’d like to try making your own nog!
We ended our time around the table exchanging gifts to one another. Such generous and sweet reminders of our love and friendship.
Another wonderful Celebration to tuck away in our hearts. Thank you Judy and Elmer for a beautiful evening and thank you girls for all your love and prayers and friendship and celebrations!!
You’ll find the recipe for this soup at Mennonite Girls Can Cook today! Enjoy…
I wanted to warn some of you out there that the Farro grain is not a good choice for everyone, especially not me. Remember that lovely dish of Farro and beets I enjoyed at the restaurant on Sunday night? It totally did me in for 3 days. So beware… just because something is called healthy doesn’t mean it’s good for everyone. I’m a little weird that way. Another thing that does not agree with my system is green tea. So now you know way more than you need to know about me.
Now for the good news. My back is all better. I mailed off my Christmas cards and letter yesterday. Today I get to go visit my hairdresser and tonight we are having our first Christmas event at our house with our small group. We are going to share finger food together and exchange some from my house to your house gifts. Enjoy your Thursday!
Last Friday afternoon Dear and I traveled to Chilliwack, B.C. and home again the same evening. Bev and Harv treated 12 of the Mennonite Girls and their husbands to a wonderful evening of delicious food and fellowship filled with lots of laughter.
Most of these photos were taken by Anneliese and Judy. Thank you girls for letting me use them in this collage. Dear and I had several offers to spend the night in Chilliwack but we had to return the same night because of Dear’s work obligations.
The main dish will be featured in our new cookbook. Our meal started with a lovely soup course, followed by a salad course, main course, and dessert of Chocolate Mousse pictured in the collage.
A huge thank you to Bev and Harv for hosting us and providing us with delicious food and opening the door to a night of laughter filled fellowship! We appreciated every minute of our time together!
I’m in preparation mode around here. Got all my meal shopping done yesterday. We might include a special breakfast in our day tomorrow since Thanksgiving dinner will not be until 4:00 P.M. tomorrow. We’re praying our son’s trip across the pass will be uneventful and that he’ll get here without delay on Wednesday night. Don’t be surprised if there is no new activity here for a while…
I wanted to have the cover of our new cookbook posted on my personal blog.
Right now Dear and I are celebrating family and sharing with our son one of the recipes I’m contributing to the family section.
Celebrations are a wonderful part of our lives. Are you celebrating something this last week of October and beginning of November?
The Mennonite Girls Can Cook are happy to announce that our second cookbook will be released Spring of 2013! Click over to the MGCC site to read all about it and to leave a comment for a chance to win our 2nd cookbook.
AND…while I’m making announcements, don’t be surprised if the look of my blog changes this week.
Head over to Mennonite Girls Can Cook to get this simple recipe for a tasty satisfying breakfast or brunch.
The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b. 