A couple Fridays ago, I headed back over to Amanda and Meghan’s apartment for the third installment of our book club (you can see the first and second installments here). Our book this time was We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates, and we settled into discussion with a round of cosmos, of course!
While we gossiped about things that had nothing to do with the book worked our way through the questions, we also nibbled on french bread toasts with brie and fig preserves:
Fig + cheese = one of the best combinations ever:
For dinner, I brought along some CSA salad, and Meghan (who has become the chef of these evenings!) put together a delicious pasta with sweet corn and tomatoes:
The pasta also had a very light cheesiness. Amanda was right when she said it was like grownup mac-and-cheese:
We actually did discuss the book after we ate the pasta because we needed some digestion time — there was a lot of pasta there! However, dessert could not stay hiding in the wings for long. Dessert was my other responsibility of the night, and I had taken it seriously and gotten preparation underway right when I arrived home from work that day. I gathered the last of my CSA watermelon, crenshaw melon, and nectarine:
After cutting everything into chunks, I added some balcony basil and a spoonful of Olga‘s Russian apricot jam and then coarsely mashed everything together:
I put the whole mix in the freezer — first in mine and then in Amanda and Meghan’s when I got to their apartment — until we were ready to eat it. I had no idea how it would come out, but it turned linto a refreshing summer sorbet:
On the side, we had the last bits of my Ulimana raw chocolate and the marzipan that Wife and Ted had brought me from Sicily (both had been waiting in the freezer for this moment for weeks!):
Amanda and Meghan sent me home with tons of leftover pasta, so I mixed it with my own leftover veggies … and turned it into pasta salad to last me through the next week’s lunches 🙂
I kept repeating the melon and basil combo the rest of the week, too — it made for such a peppy little fruit salad:
Amanda and Meghan, thanks for another installment of the best book club ever … and for keep me fed for an entire week after it 😛
Speaking of books and food, do you have a favorite book about or related to food? I think mine is Like Water for Chocolate. I haven’t read it since I was maybe 15, but I remember loving it.
Tales of Expansion: Baby Butternut Edition 
wooo….such an interesting installment, food and book, both of my passion in life! 😀
I can’t remember I’ve read any book related to book (except for recipe books). I’ll look for like water for chocolate! 🙂
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I love that book!! Have you ever seen the movie? I’ve been meaning to rent it forever…
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Ruth Reichl’s book Garlic and Sapphires is really really good. It’s all about her experiences in restaurants as a restaurant critic.
Great little get together!!! Fig spread and brie is the best!
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Haha, I wonder if you’ll ever catch up on blogging Sarah. I’m still waiting for my cake entry! Anyway, my fav book on food is probably Eat, Pray, Love, the eating section because she’s in Italy and you know how much I LOVE Italian food in Italy. Best in the world!
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Someone just recently told me to read that book! I watched the movie when I was in college – pretty good.
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You have the most interesting ideas! I never would have thought to freeze the fruit like that with the jam.
I have to say I liked Amanda Hesser’s book a lot. I’m not always a fan of her “voice” but I really like some of the chapters in that book.
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One of my favorite food related books is called French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork and Corkscrew by Peter Mayle. I love his travel books. I usually read them when I don’t have any real vacation in my future.
The book is amusing because he goes around to various festivals and events in France related to food, and many of them are as quirky and quaint as you might imagine. Frogs’ Legs, Escargot and cheese are certainly features, but he also writes about a very cool race that people run through wine country. Aaah…. Such a paperback getaway. Now I feel like reading it again.
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I love basil and citrus fruits, especially in the form of alcoholic beverages 🙂
I’d love to join a book club, as I’ve become quite a book worm this summer. I always want to discuss the books with someone, but never have anyone to do it with! I should start my own. As far as books about food, I really don’t know that I have read any. My favorite book about nutrition would have to be “Good Calories Bad Calories”. It was very eye opening and informative!
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Eat Pray Love was pretty good. I need to read more foodie fiction! I read Water for Chocolate in high school…I was a bad girl and I was supposed to read it for Spanish class but after one chapter gave up and read it in English instead. I think I actually did the same thing with Don Quixote in college…no wonder my Spanish sucks!
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There’s a book of short stories called Alone in the Kitchen with an eggplant…I think something like that! It’s one of my faves 😀
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My favorite food book is Tender at the Bone. It’s by Ruth Reichl (she was the editor of Gourmet, the food writer for the New York Times… serious foodie!) and is basically her memoir. It involves crazy hippies in Berkeley and her mom poisoning everyone with old crab and it’s amazing and hilarious and heartfelt. And there are recipes! 😀
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You are reading my mind, I’m ALLL about fruits with herbs this summer. Love love love it.
Does James and the Giant Peach count? I feel like i remember reading it as a kid and the descriptions of the peach were soo delish all I ever wanted for weeks were peaches!
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