Cooking up a Storm

As seems to be the trend with me recently, I have food pictures piled up that I need to get posted.

First up is a salad luncheon I went to.  My friend is pregnant (or perhaps she had her baby today) and decided that inviting the girls over for a salad lunch was a great way to see some friends and eat some food, but not have to go out anywhere.

I made this salad:

This is tomatoes, broccoli (raw), black olives and feta cheese.  Yum!

My friend made a nice, fresh, simple salad, and she also made a really tasty homemade dressing for it.

For dessert there was this fruit salad with whipped cream.

In keeping with the fruits and veggies theme, I made a loaf of carrot bread.

And another one of her friends made a fruit salad too.  We enjoyed lots and lots of fruits and veggies that day.  It was a really nice lunch get together.

Then I had to prepare something for a deployed spouses dinner.  I am a Key Spouse (definition to follow), so generally the Key Spouses prepare a dish to bring to dinner that is for all deployed spouses and their families.  This would be those spouses of deployed service members.  We have these dinners, I think, once a quarter.  

This time the theme was a Luau.  I decided to make these very easy pineapple cupcakes.  A friend told me about this recipe last year, but I never got around to trying it until I realized it would be perfect for this occasion.  I decided to pass on the icing, and instead do it as a pineapple upside cupcake.

To make these, you mix one box of yellow (or white or even angel food cake I think) cake mix and 1- 20 oz can of crushed pineapple, juice and all.

Then you can bake as a cake or as cupcakes.

To make mine more like pineapple upside down cakes, I added a cherry.

They came out perfectly!

I even packed some up to take to the girl's at work.

I am definitely making them again.  In fact, I am making them Sunday to send to work with Ryan.

There was still one more function that week that I had to cook for.  This was for our Key Spouse meet and greet.  I am a Key Spouse for Ryan's squadron, which is defined as (taken from Travis AFB description):

Key Spouses are trained volunteers that provide personal, peer-to-peer support for their squadron's families. Their role is to care for families by providing them with information from their squadron's leadership about events, programs, and other available resources during periods of separation. As an official unit representative, they also serve as a point of contact when spouses need to communicate any difficulties they may be experiencing to their leadership. As fellow military spouses who also live with and adapt to military lifestyle cycles and changes, they are passionate about what they do! They are a critical team member of each squadron's leadership, and they are informed, equipped, and empowered to make a difference on base and in the lives of their squadron's families.

Our program is rebuilding now and I am happy to be a part of this new team of lovely ladies.  Since we are mostly all new to this within the squadron, we decided to have a meet and greet so that spouses can meet us and see who we are and know who they can come to if they need it (particularly if their spouse was deployed).

Here are all the goodies we had at our fun party.  Mine isn't pictured, but I made a 7 layer bean dip that disappeared fast!

I forget what these are called, but one side has kimchi in the middle.

More cookies!  We had lots and lots of cookies.

I told you!  Lots of cookies!

Boy was I glad when that week was over because I didn't have to make anything for the following week.

QUESTIONS:  Do you ever cook food for functions?  Make food to send to your spouses work?  What is your favorite salad to prepare?