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May 5, 2005
For all the hundred other million things that went on since I last stopped by, what I most want to say and in fact, I’m even considering have a t-shirt printed to mark the feat, is that I SURVIVED MY FIRST COOKING CLUB TURN.
We started off last September picking the months we would host. I passed on Thanksgiving because I didn’t want to be first, November would be boring, December too crazy, January too bare after taking all the Christmas decorations down. Gina grabbed February, too bad, I thought Valentines would’ve been a good one. I was torn between St. Patrick’s Day (March) and Easter (April) but because I have more Easter things to festivate the house with, I picked April. Maybe two months later I had a date with the calendar and discovered Easter would be over by April. One by one, we went to cooking clubs where my themeless pressure built up. I love themes, I get excited about details and while I had some great ideas, none of them were right.
At a lunch with friends from work, oh how I love to share my dilemma’s with a crowd, we nailed it.
The Phantom of the Opera.
At first I dreamed up a plan that would have a real live opera singer come over with a pianist. We have good lighting, imagine how cool it would be! Actually coordinating it with a real live opera singer schedule became complicated (and expensive) so one of my friends offered to get me Andrew Lloyd Webber CDs from her husband’s company. To dress them up, I made pretty CD labels and jewel case covers highlighting us as the stars in the production at my opera house. We were nine. My colours were burgundy, burnt orange and gold. I wrapped the CDs in burgundy paper with burgundy ribbons and put them on top of their table settings. Across those I put a single burgundy and peach rose and on top of that I made place cards for each person with their names and character descriptions (horoscopes). That was fun, it freaks me out how we were our signs. I put pink light bulbs in all the lights in the dining room and I had tall, small, short and fat burgundy and burnt orange candles across the table with arrangements of flowers and grapes and ribbons. It looked beautiful. We have speakers through the house so Andrew Lloyd Webber music rang through the halls and I even got dry ice so the floor would be covered in smoke - though it had a somewhat helium effect. I had to have everyone waiting at the doors while I ran in fast to set the ice off and then shuffled them in before it expired.
Hard to believe it was a year ago this week that my grandmother had her aneurysm. She would have LOVED my party, she would’ve given me a hundred ideas and recipes and she’d have been there at some point taking four rolls of pictures. I can’t tell you how many times I thought of her while I was preparing things, how many waves of sadness hit. She left me her china, for as long as I can remember I knew it would be mine. Well at least since I asked for it, brazen as it was, though she told me I would’ve gotten it anyway. The only other thing I admired was her silver locket but I knew it would go back to the Olive family, her elderly childless aunt, because that’s how it is.
It was three o’clock in the morning, the day of my dinner, as I was carefully washing each piece of china I would need (over 70 pieces!), when I started placing the teacups in the water and into the sink fell a silver locket. Maybe it wasn’t as beautiful as the Olive family locket, but the symbolism was big. I cried. It had my favourite picture of her with my grandfather and one with her as a girl and there’s no question she put that locket in that cup knowing one day I’d be pulling it out. When? Did she consider how it would touch me? Did she wonder when I would find it? She couldn’t have imagined it would be the day I missed her most...I hope she heard my thank you.
This is our first year of cooking club and it’s been a mixed bag. Shelley made as a warm, fuzzy, fall meal with Cornish hens. At Kelley’s we had a Thai chef teach us how to make Szechuan food, Molly made stuffed pork tenderloins and she taught us how to make sushi. Gina made a real Italian five course meal. At Diane’s St. Patrick’s dinner, we worked in pairs to prepare an old-fashioned Irish meal...I stir you drink, you drink, I drink. The biggest hit that night was mashed potatoes with cabbage in it. Or at least that’s what I last remember. So now here I was, up to my ears in mess, short about three days and swearing to GOD I would NEVER do it again when my doorbell rang and miraculously, Molly was standing there. She had her husband, a hot shot VP with a team of say 10,000 under him, come home from a high pressure job in the middle of the day so she could help me because my husband was too busy. Molly looks like Julia Roberts but it’s her disposition, her calm, strong, true nature that makes her most beautiful and when she arrived, I knew everything was going to be ok. My meal would be perfect.
The night officially kicked off with Shelley’s cosmopolitans with blackberries. I started with two dips, an avocado sour cream one for the vegetables and a hot spinach, three cheese artichoke dip with tostidos. They loved that one. I made puffed pastries and stuffed them with bruschetta and those flew off the platter. After the dry-ice-rush seating I served them my leek and potato soup with grated cheese topped with toasted cashews. The cashews made the soup fantastic. Next came a spinach salad with a raspberry mustard vinaigrette and fresh raspberries. My main course was pan-seared halibut with a lemon, fresh caper sauce, wild rice and julienned vegetables. That fish was absolutely knock-out. I had it a couple weeks before when we were out with friends at one of my most favourite restaurants. Shelley and Kelley know the owner and got the recipe and I have to share it with you. Elegant and fantastic, but so, so easy. I wrapped up the meal with my grandmother’s carrot cake but the coupe de glace had to b the masks. I had the chef at the hotel beside my office make dark and white chocolate praline phantom masks for each of them.
And then they were gone. Well maybe everybody but Shelley. My sink is in my island and above that I have the counter with stools where the family eats while I do things. I was exhausted and Remo was guilty by association so we pulled up stools while Shelley washed the dishes and talked. And talked. Truth be told, catching up on the gossip at the end of the night is one of my most favourite things to do but I was so wiped out I wasn’t following what we were talking about. Remo was actually in worse shape because his eyes were rolling around. When I finally reeled myself in and focussed in on what she was saying and she said expressively, “c’mon, we have to tell him the story from the beginning”, I lost it. What story? My laugh woke Remo up. She left at 2:30.
And the whole thing was over.
And so is this.
I’m going to update on life at the zoo in a separate post because most of the world doesn’t give a rat’s tail about cooking club.
Allisun
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