January – Food

Start the year (and the long, cold winter) with some warm comfort food! You’ll go home with new ideas, new recipes, and the lasting warmth of conversation with other women who enjoy great food.

Jan 16: Peggy Ryan, former owner/chef of Va Pensiero now spends her time teaching cooking. She will give us some tips and recipes for creating those comforting soups and stews whose aromas permeate our homes and our memories.

Jan 23: Gail Forsberg, former owner of the Pretty Good Café, will walk us through her cookbook, reminiscing about the stories behind the recipes that made her café a legend in Winnetka, including her recipe that Abby Mandel referred to in the Tribune as ‘the ultimate comfort food’.

Jan 30: Alison Reich, who teaches cooking and baking, trained in Paris with a Grand-Diplome from the Ecole de Gastronomie Française, Ritz-Escoffier. She will share professional baking and decorating tips, favorite sources for recipes and ingredients, and some of her favorite recipes.

February – Finance

Time to focus on finances. These are old topics with new (and in some cases, surprising) information for yourself, your parents, or even your adult children.

Feb 6: Judi Olk, attorney, will give us guidelines in choosing a financial planner, and identify the simple legal documents every woman should have (and know where they are!)

Feb 13: Judy Archambault, accountant, will discuss the new rules for retirement planning including new tax laws. Whether you are an employee, self-employed, or a beneficiary, these changes affect you.

Feb 20: Joan Ritsch, bank president will chair a panel discussing housing options in retirement, including reverse mortgages (and how they might allow you to stay in your present home), downsizing to a smaller house, condo living, and retirement homes.

Feb 27: What you don’t know (or understand) about Social Security can have serious repercussions for you or for your family, with Jean Cleland, Director of Community Education at North Shore Senior Center.

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April – Mothering

These are dicey times to be a mother. We want to prepare our children for the world without overloading or terrifying them. We want them to appreciate their many advantages and learn to be generous to others. We want to help them handle the steady influx of information from the outside world and from inside their bodies.

April 3: Dr. Jeanne Beckman, Clinical & Development Psychologist in Winnetka and columnist for the Winnetka Alliance for Early Childhood, will show us how to talk to children about their fears – including how to help them ‘cope with the unimaginable’ in light of recent events.

April 10: Jo Moore, past board chair of Chicago Foundation for Women, who recently teamed with Susan Price, author of The Giving Family: Raising Our Children to Help Others, will explain `family-based philanthropy’ grounded on the premise of not simply teaching children to give, but getting them involved and excited about it!

April 17: Suzi Donnelly, former adolescent program director for Planned Parent Resource center, will share advice and resources for having an informative, meaningful discussion with your children about sexuality.

April 24: Kimberly Brya, a parent committed to the health and safety of children, will point out the perils of the Internet and the dangers children face when they experiment online without knowing the repercussions.