WARNING: This is a post where the pictures do not match the words. It’s the epitomy of either laziness or super efficient blogging 🙂
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We’re self-proclaimed foodies.* A couple months ago, a bunch of our foodie friends decided to start a Gourmet Club. About once a month, someone volunteers their home and picks a food theme. The rest of us scour our recipe boxes, the internet, and magazines to find a new recipe that matches the theme. While there are no hard and fast rules, the idea is to make something different that you wouldn’t normally make. We use the term ‘gourmet’ pretty loosely. We figured it was less expensive than going out to eat all over town which is kinda what we had been doing. I don’t think we’ll ever give up Restaurant Week though.
*people who love to try (eating and makeing) new foods, appreciate complex tastes and creative combinations, and have unspoken rules about ordering at restaurants to ensure you try the maximum amount of different foods given the number of people sitting at your table.
The first time, we did tapas. Our hostess made all the food that time and I don’t really remember what we had. But it was yummy.
Second go ’round was at our house. I picked Asian. I know, shocking. I provided bulgogi (Korean barbecued beef), korean radish salad, and japchae (cellophane noodles, also Korean). We also enjoyed shrimp lettuce wraps, satay, and black coconut rice. The real benefit of Gourmet Club is the fellowship and we spent hours playing board games after all the Asian was put away.
This past weekend, we did polish. Polish night consisted of pierogies (baked not boiled), haluski, sweet kielbasa, and a polish dessert. It’s been really fun hanging out over different kinds of food (most of which I don’t have to cook or pay for 🙂
FAQ’s
- What other themes will you try? It’s really up to the next host but we did toss around gourmet versions of kids food for next summer.
- What do you do with your kids? We take them. Our other foodies (mostly young marrieds w/o kids) have been very gracious about letting our children invade their space. It’s great when we host because we can put them to bed and keep partying.
- What if you don’t like the food? The best part of the potluck aspect is you should be bringing something you like. That way you’ll at least like one thing. I will say though that even my super picky husband ate and liked the haluski which had cabbage and he normally doesn’t do any cooked vegetables. That’s the fun! You don’t know what you’ll find you like.
If you’re reading this thinking it sounds like fun, it is. And you should start . It’s really easy and takes very little coordination on anyone’s part.
