BCCP 2012

Thanks everyone for making BCCP 2012 a success!! From all the texts/emails I received the next day sounds like everyone had too much fun! After everyone was settled after a glass of wine or two (or three or four) we did our little gift exchange which of course didn't disappoint. Per the usual great gifts everyone!

We also celebrated Lisa's Birthday with a special song and some cake!

Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, Lisa
Happy Birthday Lisa!
It's your Birthday, there is better way to celebrate, 
Then putting lots of food on our plates,
And for dessert cake and ice cream too.
Happy Happy Happy Birthday to you!

Can't wait to see everyone in January after the Holidays!

BCCP

How I feel when the first person arrives at BCCP:

How I feel during BCCP:












How I feel the next day:

October Book Club

Lisa hosted a great night on October 26th. Thank you for hosting Lisa! There was some great food and conversations! I think you started a new trend of having Book Clubs on Friday nights once and awhile.

September Book Club

Last night was a record for the RBTW ladies...we all read the book (well minus one) and almost everyone made it last night. It was a full house! Thanks for hosting Tiffany! Those slutty brownies were amazing!

This month we read Gone Girl, this is the new "it book". Gone Girl is a thriller, the author strings you along revealing just a little at a time to keep you turning the page. This was defiantly a "can't put it down type of a book". We had some great discussion questions given to us from another Book Club. We talked about Nick & Amy's marriage, Amy's weird parents,  And of course we had to cast the movie....Reese Witherspoon will play Amy and everyone else is sort of hard to cast. For Nick a few names were thrown out like Jeremy Renner, Josh Duhamel (if only he could act), Bradly Cooper, or Jeremy Sisto. 'Go should be Jennifer Carpenter from Dexter, Boney should be Frances McDormand, and Andie should be ScarJo. 

It's hard to list other topics of conversation, since there were so many of us last night there were a lot of different conversations going on at once. Usual stuff: dogs, Pinterest, handwriting, television shows, clothes, and vacations.

Best Quote of the Night..... "They better not be Lovely Boning it up." -Katie Halpin

How I spent my summer vacation

She Gone...

This month we are reading Gone Girl, this book is all over the best-seller lists right now. I'm so happy we're reading this book at the beginning of it's popularity, something tells me this will be the new "must-read". Rumor has it Reese Witherspoon has already signed up to play Amy Dunne. So far it's a lot better then Fifty Shades of Dumb Grey. Sounds like a lot of our members have already finished this book and that is always a good sign!! We don't have the best track record over at RBTW.

You will want to finish this one, I don't think you'll want to come to BC without reading it, I think there will be way too many secrets given away. Plugging your ears may not work this month. Finish up ladies, two weeks!

August Book Club

Thanks so much for hosting Rachel, it was an awesome night on your roof top!! And the homemade food was fabulous, not to mention homemade pita bread!! We also welcomed a new member Ashley, hope we didn't scare you away!

Everyone enjoyed the book The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks, it was a wonderful tale. This book is filled with interesting facts about HeLa cells and how they changed research as we know it. We also learned who Henrietta was from the beginning of her life. The detective work that went into this week is so interesting. It was a wonderful read, RBTW would highly recommend this book!

Now down to business...we talked a lot about two things most of the night...The Olympics and family vacations. If you were to be an Olympic Athlete what would you want to be? Would you go on a family vacation for two full weeks? Both are hard questions...you would be surprised to know both these questions can be discussed on a beautiful night for HOURS and HOURS.

The night ended with some perfectly cooked S'more brownies, delish! Thanks Martha Rachel!! 

And the morning started like this.....

June Book Club

Summer is here! And this makes Book Club happy....how could you not be happy with this view!

(sorry iPhone pic)

In fact, we were all so happy that we completely forgot to discuss the book. Oops- darn Wine Book Club! We had some exciting news last night.....we are down one member but adding a teeny tiny member. Congrats to Kathy and we will miss you Liz!

We spent the night on the rooftop, it went some like this:

Kris: "Let's go to the rooftop."
Elizabeth: "Great. I love rooftops!"

There was a side conversation for those that read the book much later in the night, I don't know what they said but it sounds like those who read A Visit from the Goon Squad really enjoyed it.

Topics of conversation included: pregnancy, Street Festivals, white wine vs. red wine, flash mobs, Florida, student loans, NATO, protesting, summer hours, real estate, Las Vegas, cats, Protein Bar, crime, new jobs, weird whiskers, Nashville, college prices, and mortgages. We sound so serious, could Book Club be growing up...um...probably not. We didn't talk about hair removal or celebrities, weird!

Cheers to Kris on her first hosting, great job! Everyone enjoyed sitting outside on the rooftop, maybe too much! Thanks for having us, we will be back!

April Book Club

Last night we enjoyed a fun night at Katie's apartment, thanks for hosting! Wherever there is Popper Dip that is where you will find the ladies from RBTW, just sayin'.

Our book choice this month was 50 Shades of Grey, we had to see what all this hype was about. Basically we couldn't not read this book. But did it live up to the hype? Sorry to say most of us were somewhat disappointed but then on the other hand most of us read the book, which is very rare (two did not). The writing is isn't great and the story line could use some work as well. It was hard to get past the similarities to Twilight, naive girl with the mysteriousness dangerous man, just too cliché. We'd still tell fellow Wine Book Clubs to read it for a fun night of hilarious conversation over lots and lots of wine (weeknight wine runs aren't really ok and coming back with champers is really NOT ok). I prefer not to go into details of the X rated conversation (Hi Mom!) from last night but I will say that somethings should always remain tight. It's a quick easy read that sucks you in from page one, just go upload (do not buy the hard copy please, that's just wrong) there are typos, weird terms, and lots of sex. One last thing on the book...what year is it suppose to be anyways? What college senior in Seattle wouldn't have a laptop? Dumb.

We did talk about the book more then usual but other topics included: Angelina, Middletons, tattoos, scars, gypsies, Chelsea Handler, nervous breakdowns over Kayne & Kim, broken feet, every hot celebrity male under the sun including but not limited to James Franco, Johnny Depp, Ryan Gosling, Michael Fassbender, Ed Burns, and Ed Norton to name a few, also Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall, vanity sizing, Block 37, Target, "stars are just like us", waiting tables, man voices, and CTA mishaps.

Fun fact of the night is our new member Katy is voice twins with Zoe Deschanel.

We would have taken picture but someone spilled an entire full glass of red wine on the carpet while standing up to get her camera and of course everyone went into a chaotic state of cleaning. So in place I will give you this:

After the massive spill something really weird happened, a product appeared on the counter that our hostess claims to have never seen before in her apartment. And guess what?...it works like a charm. Book Club Wine Fairy? Weird. Seriously though where did it come from?

Retro Recipe

This retro recipe is from Emily and everyone was talking about it after the last Book Club!

Ingredients:
Loaf of Wonder bread
Center cut bacon
8 oz cream cheese
1/2 cup blue cheese (more or less depending on your taste)

Directions:
Cut off crust of approximately 1/2--3/4 loaf of bread
Cut bacon slices in half
In a separate bowl, mix together cream cheese and blue cheese
Spread cream/blue cheese mixture on crust-less pieces of bread
Then slice bread into thirds
Wrap bacon around outside of bread and roll into pinwheel-shape, secured with a toothpick.

Cooking:
Place bacon on aluminum foil or nonstick pan
Bake at 325-350 degrees for 20 minutes
May need additional time

March Book Club

Written by our guest blogger Lisa from Lipgloss Lush.....

March Book Club was hosted by Emily in Lakeview on the trendy Southport Corridor. Emily's fare was delicious! Everyone especially loved her retro-inspired bleu cheese/bacon creation. We were pleased to induct our new member Katy to the group! She was a hit; hopefully we didn't scare her off by our non-book related discussions.

Speaking of the book, we read The Marriage Plot for March. Many of our members didn't finish it; but for those who did finish or at least read some of it, there were mixed reviews. We were all a little freaked out by Leonard's ups and downs, but most of us could relate with some crazy boyfriend story. Rachel's may have taken the cake as she regaled us with tales of hers: lest we forget, Chris G is thought to now be a coal miner in the UP. I guess we will never know if he is using that stolen bike to get to work every day ("The worst is that he stole my bike! It was a diamondback")...

Other topics discussed were babies, kids, how we all babysat at like 12 and were left with the kids until all hours of the night. Would parents do that now? Probably not. We discussed the careers or lack thereof of those American Reunion kids, Pinterest recipes (hit or miss but fun regardless!), Milwaukee Summer Fest, and Lincoln Park Zoo. If you haven't, you really need to go! While we are on the topic of animals, we talked about amazing boyfriends who love pets - specifically cats and fish...but what to do about those aquariums?

We debated the perfect hangover food: Taco Bell or something else?? Also discussed were the benefits of flash mob weddings - as long as you don't get caught! In my notes I have a quote of my own, "Boobs are just silly fun" but I can't recall the context - I am sure it made sense after all that wine. An important discussion revolved around Botox and how NOW is the time to do it! It's all about prevention, ladies! Noticeably missing from our discussion was the topic of hair removal - I guess we'll have to pick it up next month.

Per usual, we took our picture too late into the evening. For next month, 50 Shades of Gray was suggested. I ran into the sisters Halpin, and they educated me that this is basically straight up porn...but really, who doesn't like some sexy times? The real question is whether it will make you too "hot under the collar" (thanks Katie H.) as you are reading it in public on your Kindle.

All in all, it was a really fun night! Thanks again to our lovely host Emily and our sponsor whatshouldwecallme.tumblr.com

Sounds About Right!

Kathy's Book Club

We had a nice small group last Thursday in Lincoln Square.

We had lots to gossip about that included: Demi Moore, Kathy's crazy 3D TV, CPS, Ground Pig (Hog), $4000 parking fines, pregnancy dreams, Twitter, C-Sections, a study on worms that drink alcohol live longer, a little about the book, calling into work, Kardashian Kollection and Morton Salt.

Our next book is Kathy's pick and she choose The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. I've seen this book all over lately, so I can't wait to start it!

Thanks for hosting Kathy!!