OK – these pics have been sitting in the archives on my computer.  I almost forgot that I took them!  Remember how I told you these JSS gals are relentless in trying to outdo each other on Bee Days or any get-togethers, for that matter?  Even when we just bring potluck things to share on our Day Retreat days, the food is incredible.  So I promised I was going to “bring it down a notch” the next time anyone visited my house.  And I declared it PB & J Day!

But I couldn’t just make it any ol’ peanut butter and jelly.  Or any ol’ bread, for that matter.  It had to be gourmet.  Which sort of defeated the whole “bring it down a notch” idea.  But oh, well.  It was a JSS gathering after all.  I couldn’t let the girls down.  It just wouldn’t be right!
 

Did you know it is super simple to make homemade peanut butter?  I sure didn’t.  So I did a little research.  Here are the ingredients: peanuts.  Yep, that’s it!  Peanuts and a food processor is all you need.  You’ll notice I went all out and bought the WalMart store brand peanuts. 

So here’s the difficult recipe:  Put the peanuts into the food processor and turn it on.  Let it run for 2 minutes.  Voilà!  Peanut Butter.  Gourmet Peanut Butter.  Because you made it from scratch.  Go ahead.  Wow your friends with that recipe.  You don’t have to tell them how easy it is.  Just tell them it’s homemade.  And it’s really very good!  No artificial sweetners, colors, nasty chemical preservatives.  Nothin’ but peanuts.

So I had to dress the sandwiches up a bit.  Since the peanut butter was so easy.  Oh, I forgot….. gourmet peanut butter.  So I made cashew butter too.  Same recipe only cashews.  I bet you could have figured that out all by yourself.  And we had smooth and crunchy peanut butter.  For crunchy you just throw some extra peanuts into the food processor right at the last.  Easy.  So we had three kinds of bread – including cinammon raisin.  And we had peanut butter with bananas, peanut butter with marshmallow creme and also two kinds of jelly.  And then, because I saw it on a menu at a restaurant not too long ago…….

……….. grilled peanut butter and jelly.  In a cast iron skillet.  It’s the Pioneer Woman influence on me.  That link even shows you how she cares for hers.  I can’t cook any more without my cast iron skillet.  And the hardest part about making these?  Getting peanut butter on one side of the bread and butter on the other without making a total mess of yourself.  But they are yummy.  And later the girls made me make two more – only with peanut butter and marshmallow creme.  Oh, my!  That yummy melted marshmallow over the peanut butter?  You absolutely have to try it sometime.

So here’s how the table looked.  I was going to cut the sandwiches into fun shapes, but that meant too much waste.  So I just quartered them and threw them onto a plate.  I was, after all, trying to tone down the day.  Bring it down a notch, remember?  They told me I was not successful.

The grilled ones were a big hit.

But these were all equally delicious.  And it was really necessary to have the potato chips to cut all that sweetness.  They were just Lay’s out of a bag.  And before the day was over, we even had the marshmallow creme jar sitting on the table.  With a spoon in it.  And we had consumed multiple bowls of chips.  Too much sweetness.

And now, because this is a quilting blog, I have to show you some pictures of a fabulous quilt that Susan brought that day.  She had just picked it up from the longarm quilter, Susan Corbett.  And it’s quite necessary that you see a lot of pictures of it.  It is just too spectacular for words.

I didn’t get a good picture of the whole quilt.  This one shows most of it.  And I will get good pics of it soon, because it’s going to be in our guild’s quilt show in a couple of weeks.  I predict it will do very well in the quilt show.  You heard it hear first.

Susan’s appliqué is absolutely exquisite.  Perfect.  Unbelievable.  And Susan C’s quilting absolutely shows off the appliqué pieces perfectly.  Exquisitely.  Unbelievably.  OK, I’ve run out of descriptive words.  But you have to see more.

I hope you can see the quilting stitches in the pictures.  Perfection.

I don’t know what else to say.  So maybe I’ll just let the rest of the pictures speak for themselves.

The quilting echos the shapes of the appliqué.  The entire quilt could not be more perfect.

I love the way there are straight lines mixed in with all the curvy quilting lines.  And can you believe the tiny circles on those little white flowers?  Perfection.

This picture really caught the light just right to see all the stitching.  It’s an absolute one-of-a-kind quilt.

I’ll have more pictures of it soon.  Hanging at the quilt show.  If you live in the Fort Worth area, you can get details about the quilt show here:  Trinity Valley Quilters’ Guild website.  We’d love to have you come.  And you can see this beautiful quilt up close and personal.  In person.  I predict it will have lots of ribbons hanging on it.

And by the way, Pioneer Woman was on The Today Show the day the gals came over for PB & J Day.

It’s the second time that something has been happening at my house on a day that she was on a major morning show.  She plans it that way just for me.  I’m just sure of it.  She’s my hero.  One of these days she’s gonna need to learn how to quilt.  Maybe someone will tell her about my little blog.

Happy quilting!
Barb