Sunday Potluck

Happy Sunday y'all!  Hope you had a great weekend filled with lots of yummy stories to share with me!  Sunday is my favorite day of the week.  Why?  Because I get to spend the day in the kitchen at church with family and friends.  See, at our church, we have potluck EVERY SUNDAY.  Sometimes we have folks to bring a dish, but most of the time we have them bring the ingredients and me and a handful of teens to 50 somethings get busy in the kitchen creating a feast for the rest of the congregation.  It can get quite interesting back there, especially if we have folks who may have forgotten to bring their ingredient or happen to miss church for some reason.  We have had many a triumph, mishap, and complete tragedy back there.  But it's always fun and it always comes together!  A time or two we have even pulled off a fish and loaves miracle.  However that was not the case today.  Today we had well more than enough to go around.  This week, a big ol' down home country breakfast was on the menu.  We must have had 20 dozen eggs, 20 pounds of sausage, and about 35 cans of biscuits.  Oh and let's not forget the gravy made from scratch!  At first we weren't sure if we were gonna have enough to go around.  I had to throw out quite a few farm fresh eggs that had turned green, P.U.!  And for a moment I thought I was going to have to make biscuits from scratch and let me tell ya, that's NOT my greatest kitchen accomplishment for sure, LOL!  But as the time passed people kept bringing their promised ingredients.  I even had a spare 3 lb roll of sausage that i browned and threw into the eggs we beat.  When the scrambled egg and sausage mixture hit that flat top grill, woo wee, did that smell good!  Everything was ready at just the right time to take out to the buffet table and breakfast was a hit!  One nice lady even brought in some packages of flour tortillas.  It's Mexican next sunday! 

See ya in the Kitchen!

Cookie Jars

I was perusing Pinterest today, looking for some DIY homemade Christmas gifts for our Dirty Santa game that we play every year at my husband's grandma's house.  We all bring a wrapped gift within the confines of the set budget, then draw names out of a hat to see who gets to pick a gift first.  Then the next name drawn can either pick a gift from the gift tabel or steal the gift someone else picked. Lots of fun!  Especially when you throw in the gag gifts such as a huge skull chain "wrapped" in 2x4s!  So we kinda switch it up between gag gifts and normal gifts.  So...back to Pinterest!  I'm doing a search and come across these beauties!  Christmas cookies in mason jars!  I absolutely love this idea!  I'm a Kentucky girl and I love my mason jars!  I also wanted my gift this year to have a certain rustic look to it as I've been leaning that way in the kitchen here recently.  With these mason jars, you can dress them up or dress them down, which is the look I will give them.  I love antiques and rustic country, primitive decor, so that will be the look that my cookie jars will take on.  Set the jar in a pretty Christmas bowl, attach a spatula and recipe card, and VOILA, I've got a thoughtful, unique, culinary gift to take to Christmas this year!  I've noticed these in stores around the holidays and have always thought they were pretty to look at, but they are also pricey.  This year I'll do my own!  I'm so looking forward to buying the mason jars and the fabric to go on top!  Not so much looking forward to googline and figuring out how to fit the recipe on a downloaded recipe card, but it will probably be better than writing it out myself, especially if I make several of them.  After writing out all those Christmas cards, my hand will be ready to fall off!  What traditions do you have around your house at the holidays? 

See ya in the Kitchen!