[Sca-cooks] OOP - Julia & Us party

[Kingstaste]

Our Culinary Historians group had a gathering yesterday and I just posted a
write-up about it to that group list so I thought I would share it here,
too. 

Christianna

 

What a wonderful day it was yesterday!  The weather was absolutely gorgeous!


Several of us met at the theater for a showing of Julie & Julia, which was
so good!  It was my second viewing, and I have to admit I spent a lot of it
tearing up, Julia Child has meant a great deal to me over my life, and the
character of Julie (while being a great deal more neurotic than I am)
definitely shared a lot of that feeling for me.  Meryl Streep is absolutely
amazing as Julia Child.  If you haven’t gotten a chance to see this movie
yet, I highly recommend it.  Put it on your Netflix queue if you have to –
but see it!

Afterwards, 7 of us gathered at the Bush home for an amazing spread of
foods.  Nancy and Greg, so sorry you missed the party, but thank you for
your calls and emails to let me know you couldn’t get there.    For the rest
of you that missed it, what a shame!  

Our party food menu ended up including: 

            Supremes (chicken breasts) sautéed in butter and finished with a
red wine reduction

            Southern Collard Greens without Grit

            Mousse du Jambon (ham mousse)

            Oeufs en Gelee (poached quail eggs in a tarragon vegetable
aspic)

            Pommes de Terre a L'Huile (French Potato Salad)

Cucumber Vichyssoise

French Cheeses and Baguettes

Cherry Clafoutis

Reine de Saba (Chocolate & almond cake)

Champagne, coffee, and Goldfish crackers (Julia loved them, you know!)

 

We had tapes of The French Chef playing in the background, which were
wonderful to watch and chat over.  Millie graced us with stories of her
interactions with Julia at writer’s conferences, and specifically their
conversations over Southern Greens and how to get the grit out!  As for my
aspics, well, it seems you either love them or hate them, but I thought they
were wonderful.  :-)  And Tonia’s first-ever cake made from scratch – OMG –
that cake was SOOO delicious!  

Thanks again to Emilie for opening your home up for us, and to Tony who took
the little girls to Dave & Buster’s for the afternoon to give us ‘grown-up
time’ at the house!  It was good to see those of you who could make it, and
to those that didn’t, know that we celebrated in fine Culinary Historian
style!  I took a few pictures and so did Carlin, so we can post what we got
to the Photo Album for our Events, but folks descended on the food so fast
we didn’t really get a chance to get a good picture of the pretty platters
in a ‘before’ shot.  I did get pics of people eating while watching Julia
truss a chicken though.  LOL

Thanks to everyone that came out, and we’ll look forward to seeing you at
the next gathering, whatever that may be!

Christy