Book Club Meeting 2011...

Now I am breathing a sigh of relief because I can look forward to Christmas and the New Year, because I can finally relax. Hosting my usual and annual book club/holiday meeting takes a lot of my time leading up to the big day. And I am realizing I am not 30, but 42 so I have to really organize myself or I will end up sitting in my living room crying, hoping my book club members don’t notice my puffy eyes and the obvious signs of strain.


I try to get the member’s gifts ordered and done well before the meeting as well as getting all the book club stuff ready as well. This year we decided to participate in the Sister Soldier Project, where we send personal and hair care products to African-American soldiers deployed. So I had my hands full. So from the weekend before Thanksgiving, I am working towards preparing for my December meeting.

I like to host December’s meeting because of my love of Christmas, so with the decorations in place things come together in a chaotic fashion. Since I host alone, it is imperative that I have all my ducks in a row or like I said above it isn’t a pretty picture.

My meeting was this past Saturday, so I really kicked things into high gear on last Monday. I started baking the cookies for the individual members and my sister, who you know lives in Virginia. To prepare for the baking I had containers already set up with the flour, baking soda and salt. I also had my Chocolate Candy mint cookies already mixed up and I just had to get them to room temperature to bake. I did all that on Sunday, as well as baked a batch of sugar cookies for the nieces. I also, seasoned and boiled my chicken breast for chicken salad and made my ham salad all on Monday as I was making the cookies. So using 3 cookie sheets and mixing the batches of cookies I was able to bake 3 different types of cookies in less than 3 hours. Normally, I would have been at it for 6 or more hours, so pre-planning helped. Tuesday, I came home from my second job and did some dusting and setting up for my batch of Oatmeal Chocolate Chip raisin nut cookies. Wednesday, I baked those cookies and managed to wrap all the book club member gifts. Thursday was my day to go and get the fresh veggies and fruit as well as shrimp. So I left work about 4 and was home and ready to start making my Asian wings and honey barbecue wings. I also marinated my jerk wings to grill the following morning. Then I set up my dry ingredients for two different batches of cookies and for my two different cupcakes. I gave my kids on my second job cookies for Christmas. So you know I will not be baking anymore cookies anytime soon.

I got up early Friday morning and got to mixing up cookie dough and getting my coals ready for grilling. This was also the time to get my heating dishes from the storage room, which meant they had to sit outside to insure I wasn’t bringing in any lizards. I baked cookies and made cupcakes all before I had to go to my second job, because I only took off from my day job. When I go home that night, I set up trays, iced cupcakes, marinated shrimp, cleaned my den, put down carpet fresh and was in the bed by 1 am, and then I was up by 5 am. This is when I made my chicken and ham salad sandwiches, meatballs, broccoli crunch salad and vacuumed and mopped and waxed the kitchen and foyer. And after running errands and picking up my punch, I came home took a long bath, ate lunch and slept for two hours. I was TIRED.

Everything came together well before time. I learned to stop microwaving my wings, and put them in my roaster, which heats them properly, so that saved time. Frankly, I over organized myself because by 5:45 pm, everything was done and I was turning around in circles thinking I had forgotten something. But alas, everything went smoothly, and I was able to enjoy the meeting. My organization even helped to make clean up easy. I was so proud of myself. I finally got to taste my food after 9 pm, and I did a good job.

I had real nice captions to show these pictures as a slideshow, but after hours of aggravation I said F-it!