Book Club/Eating Club

 

I haven't written about Book (Eating) Club for awhile, so here are some pictures from last night's get together. As usual, food took precedence. Everyone brought something to share and hostess Beth outdid herself with appetizers and a main dish. There was a lot of talk about travel because three of them just got back from a long European tour.

We started with homemade pretzels by Beth, both regular and a cinnamon-sugar batch that were soooo good. They sounded like a lot of work, kneading and letting them rise, boiling them like bagels to give them their nice chew and then baking them. But boy were they good!

Beth also made a chicken gnocchi dish with spinach and a creamy sauce. Judy made a Greek pasta salad, and Kristina combined tomatoes and basil from her brother's garden with feta for a tasty hot dish.

I had planned to bring a Caprese salad with tomatoes from last weekend's farmers market, but the tomatoes went bad so I substituted slices of watermelon. It was refreshing with the mozzarella, basil, and a syrupy balsamic drizzle.

Sandy made shrimp scampi that was delicious.

And Barb brought a decadent ice cream cake!

And yes, we did talk about the book, "The Bird Hotel," which we all liked.

Here's a review that I found online, which summarizes it better than I could:

"Escaping a life riddled with tragedy, Irene finds herself alone in an intoxicatingly tropical corner of Central America. At La Llorona, a neglected lakeside hotel beside the village's storied volcano, she builds a new life for herself, one woven together with Scheherazade-like fables of Indigenous life. This heartrending, epic novel is about the histories that come back to haunt us, the indifference of fate, and the magical powers of the natural world."

Speaking of which, here are some magical flowers that bloomed overnight on a neighbor's cactus.

Have a colorful day