Meet Jan 31, 2012

The 22nd Meeting of the Cooking and Drinking Society took place at the elegant home of NS beginning at the nominal hour of 18:30 on a Tuesday evening. JC was the first to arrive, about 10 min early. Surprisingly, CF didn't arrive until precisely at 18:30. The others--DS, JH and SS arrived soon thereafter. It should be noted that JH rearranged his flight home from WASHDC to be Monday instead of Tuesday, thus assuring his timely arrival. NS's comment: "John has his priorities right."

NS likes to prepare meals with a theme. This time it was recipes from Brabara Kingsolver's book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." See MENU. This is a book NS listened to on tape as he recently made his way through India. The book, however, was written as a result of the Kingsolver family's year living off the land of an Appalachian (Tennessee) farm. See RECIPES.

The following photos have the subjects looking much too grim. Are they concentrating on the food, the wine, the conversation? In the future we'll try to get some "happy" photos.

The appetizers were served in the alcove adjacent to the kitchen. The alcove has soft seating arranged around a large coffee table. The first photo (left) centers on the appetizers themselves: antipasto tomatoes in upper left (orange bowl). The rice crackers used with this are either out of the picture or already consumed. Next is a bowl of olives, then the tomato pesto (brown bowl), which was used with the sliced bread. The second photo is SS, probably chewing on an olive pit. Finally CF, the thinker, probably thinking about his knee.Immediately above is an entree plate showing eggplant Papoutzakia at top, corn pudding on left, turkey sausage at bottom with sprig of parsley on it. The next photo is JH eating. In the 3rd photo is host and chef NS in foreground, DS beside him. Last photo is again the thinker.