Pie Fixes Everything!

Between homeschool lessons, Memorial Day activities (wait 'til you see pictures I took of all the gorgeous peonies at the cemeteries!!), and wrangling my boys and their friends who are out of school for the summer I've been away from MTJABM. Oh, I guess I should admit that I've been enjoying some time at "Aunt Ruthie's Sugar Pie Farmhouse". She just has so many fun ideas for decorating, great recipes, homemaker product reviews, and more. Bop on over and see what I'm talkin' about. I've also been busy transfering all my recipes over to Love From A Red Kitchen which is my 21st century cookbook.

This tip for Tuesday's Tip Jar meme (hosted by Blog Mommas --click to participate!) comes from a few years experience. If you have a neighbor that you like and your family's tastes are similar you can save some time in the kitchen by organizing a Supper Club. That's what we were doing last night with the Low Country Boil. (Except last night was with a twist which I will explain later.)

For a Supper Club you need at least 2 families who are willing to participate. Three families is ideal and four families is workable although you need a bit more planning and organizing to execute a four-family Supper Club.

This is how it works: Each family cook chooses one day of the week as "her day." On that day she cooks for her family AND the other families in the Supper Club. Now, it does take some time to prepare a couple more dinners but the beauty of it is you get your cooking done in one day...and then you're done for the week. The next night someone else is bringing your family a nice meal.

You save some money too because you can purchase grocery items on sale in bulk. If you have any questions about the particulars about a Supper Swap leave me a comment.

The Supper Club I am in now is comprised of my family and the B family. It's working like a charm! Last night's Low Country Boil was a tad different because we took the entire meal to the B's house and joined them at their table instead of just delivering the meal and coming back to our house to enjoy ours. Last night we added fellowship into the mix.

Low Country Boil

Friends + Food = Fun

What do you get when you mix some smoked sausage, cobs of corn, some red taters and jumbo shrimp in a huge pot of water with some Cajun spices then you dump it all out on a newspaper-covered picnic table and surround it with a half dozen kids and one brand-new teenager, two moms and two dads?

You get this:

After!

And then we had dessert!