Where the Wild ings Are

I suppose I should explain what Gourmet Club is. Great question Catherine & Deb! Most people don’t know.

Basically, you get together with your girlfriends once a month and take turns cooking for eachother.

It is very easy to start one.

Gather a group of 10-12 friends. Then divide into partners. Each partnership chooses a month, date and a theme. The night is centered around food. You can serve as many courses as you want. Usually the food matches the theme, but it doesn’t have to. The partners in charge the first month prepare all the food and serve everyone else in the group and do all the clean up and print out the recipes for everyone in the group. So every month, besides the one that is your turn, you just show up and eat. It is wonderful! And a great way to get new recipes.

Some groups go all out in the “gourmet” department, our only rule is that you can’t use “cream of chicken/mushroom soup!”

If you want to start one, I can give more details. We have a blog too http://www.slcgourmetgals.blogspot.com/ if you need ideas on getting started.

My partner, Michelle and I hosted Gourmet Club last night. We chose a garden party theme, so all the food and decor were centered around things from the garden.

There’s really nothing that completes a garden party like “snow” so we were forced to move inside. Gotta love Utah weather!

The Decorations
Fresh Flowers
Wheat Grass Name Cards
Chinese Lanterns
Scrapbook paper (I bought scrapbook paper, scanned it and designed everything around it. The menu, place cards, place mats, etc.)

The Menu

The Drinks
Orangeade from Target $4
Cucumber Water
Raspberry Lemonade


The Appetizers
We made four appetizers. They were each served in their own container on seperate trays.

Twisted Breadsticks on short skewers with Cinnamon Honey Butter in snowcone cups.

Melon balls with fruit dip in hand-made paper envelopes

Lettuce wraps with special sauce served in miniature chinese take out containers

Assorted veggies served in clear cups with cottage cheese ranch dip in the bottom

The Salad
Berry Salad with Gorgonzola Dressing

The Palet Cleanser
Canteloupe Granita

The Main Course
Cajun Candied Salmon
Lemon Rice
Roasted Corn Succotash
(The picture if half eaten, so not very pretty, it is much prettier than this)

The Dessert
We served Key Lime Pie (which is half-eaten in this picture too!)

In bakers boxes, we gave them 3 more desserts and with the key lime pie, we gave them samples of each dessert in the box.

Hazelnut Blondies
Raspberry Meringues
Lemon Shortbread Cookies

The Favors
This is a great gift idea for anyone. We folded cardstock accordian style and on each flap, taped seeds (tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, etc). The front reads Fresh Garden Salad Kit. And we taped the seed packet to tongs.

We also made recipe book page holders. Just cut scrapbook paper into strips, laminate and tie elastic to each end.

This post is pretty long, so I don’t want to post any of the recipes. If you want the recipes, email me and I will send them to you! wildingamber@yahoo.com