Open Door Fellowship Ladies' Sneak Away

I think I mentioned before that I was in charge of coordinating all the food and refreshments for our ladies' (in town) retreat last weekend. We met on Friday night and much of the day Saturday, so we served dessert and snacks Friday, lunch and dessert Saturday, plus beverages thru-out, of course.

Everything went very well, from my perspective. Since it's been years since I've done an event for 120+ people that wasn't at a hotel or somewhere that had serving staff, I didn't plan for quite enough help for the physical labor. So unfortunately a few people (Wende - Thank you!) had to jump in and do things when they should have been able to just relax and enjoy. But otherwise the food and refreshments were well received. My friend, Michelle Mozingo was the chef and made AMAZING food. Here's a peek at the menu on Saturday. Yes, she made everything from scratch, except the breads! She really needs to start a catering business, which she kind of already does with her friend Beckie Ellis, but they just don't call it that yet.


French Roasted Winter Vegetable Soup
with Grilled Gruyere Cheese, Tomato and Fresh Basil Croissant


Jewish Grandmother’s Chicken Noodle Soup
with Grilled open-faced Baguette of Jack, Gorgonzola Cheeses, Pancetta and Apple


Irish Beef and Toasted Barley Soup
with Grilled Pumpernickel, Smoked Gouda Cheese and Parsley Tarragon Mustard Sandwich


Spicy Asian Shrimp Soup
with Fried Crab, Ginger and Cream Cheese Wontons

On Friday night she made some amazing dips with chips for snacking. Her Artichoke Lemon Basil Dip makes my mouth water just thinking about it. I have the recipe and am going to try making it for Super Bowl Sunday. I'll let you know how it turns out.

And for dessert on Saturday, Michelle, her husband Rand and the rest of the kitchen crew made a delicious puff pastry with rich chocolate ganache topped with a touch of mint sauce. Wow! It was good!

Plus my dear friends, Linda and Beckie Ellis, and 7 other ladies of all ages and seasons of life shared for about a half hour each at the event. The theme was Jeremiah 29;11 and you can see more about that on Linda's post here. I also got a similar necklace to the one shown on her post.
I was in and out of the room a lot during the speaking times because of my tasks, but from what I heard, there was laughter, tears and huge amounts of real life stories with vulnerability shared in that room. I heard the messages were awesome. I can't wait to download them all and listen to what the Lord had to say thru these ladies. You can find them all here to download. I would highly recommend them!

Unfortunately, since I was busy with the food, I didn't have time to take any pictures. The room looked gorgeous though with a black, silver, white and seafoam green color scheme. Very modern and clean. All in all it appeared to be a success all the way around and now they're planning a retreat at Lost Canyon Camp in Williams, Arizona this Fall. It looks like a great location and should be a blast.

But now that our ladies event is successfully finished I need to move on to some much needed projects at home...you'll see a little of what's on my list on my next post. Right now, I need to ignore everything else and work on the book that I'm giving as a thank you gift. Can't say much about it now, but will show it later. It's coming along well.

Note: Last night we went to a Suns game and had a tour of the arena with Alvin Adams! Ginny, dad will be excited about this one. I got his autograph and a picture taken standing with him. That will be coming soon. Have a great weekend everyone, if I can't get back to this before that.

GO CARDINALS!!!!