Food Porn

Today, Mom hosted her quilting friends in their monthly get-together. A few weeks ago, I offered my assistance, and we decided to do a fall-themed tea. Yesterday, we got cooking and cleaning and prepping, and today went off without a hitch.

Here's what we had...

We offered a mid-morning snack:

Mini quiches--half were mushroom and spinach, half were mushroom,
zucchini and bacon. For my friend the Purple Magpie, I'll post my "recipe" at
the bottom of this post.

Blueberry scones (I cheated and used a mix).

Then came the lunch itself:

Pumpkin soup (with carrots and onion). I cooked it yesterday and then
heated it all morning in the crock pot. It was a huge hit.

Mom put together a green salad with dates, grapes and slivered almonds,
tossed in basalmic vinegarette.

Mom put together the sandwiches yesterday. We had cucumber and vegan
cream cheese (one of Mom's friends is lactose intolerant) and some with
chicken salad I made yesterday (with dried cranberries and toasted almonds).

Finally, dessert:

Brownie bites that Mom made using No Pudge Fudge. Delicious.

Mom had a gift card for a place called Cookie Connection, so we bought a
variety pack of those yesterday.

Mom baked the cupcakes using a sugar-free cake mix. I frosted them and
added the fall color sprinkles.

Everything was delicious and the ladies were very complimentary. Fortunately, we were able to foist some of the dessert on them to take home for their husbands, so we won't be eating cookies and cupcakes for days and days.

**As for the quiche recipe (requested on Twitter by The Purple Magpie)...I hardly use a recipe anymore! I chopped up about half of a medium-sized zucchini, a couple of large mushrooms, and some bacon. I put them in tiny cupcake tins and then added the batter, which is a mix of Bisquick, milk and eggs. I usually use about 1 cup of Bisquick, 1 cup of milk and 3-4 eggs. I used to follow my recipe exactly but over the years have just ad-libbed and found that as long as the mix is more egg than milk and Bisquick, it's fine. The Bisquick sinks to the bottom and makes a lovely crust. I baked them for about 20 minutes (40-45 minutes if you use a pie plate) at 400 degrees. I used a spoon to pop them right out of the tins.