Memoir of a Gourmet Club: Adventures into the World of Food

By Carolyn Garvin

This memoir begins in 1975 when six couples came together to form a gourmet club. For over forty years, this disparate group experienced camaraderie and poignant moments during meetings at which recipes were gleaned from around the world, creating cooking successesand disasters!

Memories of this period were taken from a diary which chronicled the dates and menus for each dinner, yellowed newspaper pages of recipes used and saved, and aged and tattered letters from members informing the recipient of the themes and recipes they wanted to use.

You will learn from this book how to form a club of your own: the responsibilities of each member, the themes you may want to use, recipes from many cultures, and hilarious stories of mishaps and mayhem that occurred during the gourmet club meetings. It is a memoir of the gourmet club, of how the affection for each other grew, and of the fellowship and sense of community they created. It is a love story of food and friends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jul 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504331272

Carolyn Garvin

Carolyn Garvin, a former special education teacher and principal, has four children and eight grandchildren. She lives with her husband in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Florida.

Book preview

Memoir

of a

Gourmet Club

Adventures into the World of Food

CAROLYN GARVIN

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Copyright © 2015 Carolyn Garvin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-3126-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-3127-2 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 7/24/2015

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Prologue

1 Why Should I Be Part Of A Gourmet Club?

2 Beginning The Journey

3 Getting Down To The Nitty-Gritty

4 Cooking Comes From The Heart As Well As The Hearth

5 I’m A Health Food Fanatic—What Can I Do?

6 Where In The World Are We Eating Tonight?

7 Starting At The End And Moving Back To The Future

8 Our First Thanksgiving. What Did Early Americans Eat?

9 When Does The Fun Begin?

10 The Irish Jig

11 Mangia, Mangia—Italian—My Journey Into Nostalgia

12 Konnichiwa (Good Afternoon to Evening)

13 British Delights

14 Julia Child—The French Chef

15 Broma Theon—Food of the Gods

16 Scandinavian

17 Viva La France—Bon Appetit Mes Amis

18 Celebrating the Bicentennial (1976)

19 Gourmet Club Dinners Don’t Have to be at the Host’s Home

20 By The Sea, By The Sea, Buy the Beautiful Seafood

21 Buen Provecho—Si Si Delicioso—Spanish

22 German—Guten Abend. Willkommen. Gut Essen. Gut Trinken

23 Chinese—The Year of the Horse

24 Indian—Bollywood Here We Come

25 Poolside/Patio Party

26 Cajun/ Creole

27 On The Move

28 Junk Food Pig Out

29 To Russia With Love

30 White Trash Cooking

31 The Super Bowl

32 A Visit to Indonesia

33 Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

34 Pennsylvania Dutch

35 Celebrate Good Times

36 Let’s Go South Of The Border—Mexican

37 Fondue

38 Sunday Brunch

39 Our Last Stories

The End Of Our Journey

Epilogue

Sources

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is not only a cookbook nor is it fiction. It is an informational book that is meant to assist readers, if they dare, to take the journey into gourmet clubs. Also, it contains our stories, all true, and recipes gathered by word of mouth, from relatives, friends, from cookbooks, magazines, and newspapers—any media that contains recipes. I want to thank every author of a recipe who played a part in this work. Without you, thirty-five years of cooking would never have happened.

I have wanted to write a book since I was very young and when others asked how we managed to have twelve people cook together for over thirty-five year, I decided that would be the venue for my book.

I must acknowledge the patience of my husband as I spent countless hours on the computer or poring over scraps of paper and notebooks. He sat beside me or helped with other chores so I could remain glued to the task of writing. Thank you Bob for believing in me.

I would also like to thank my children who encouraged me to publish my book—Lynn and Jim, Lisa, Bobby and Beth, and Lori and Tim and my 8 grandchildren—Morgan, Pierce, Carly, Grant, Timmy, Mattie, Emily, and Bobby who inspire me to achieve my goals at any age.

I want to thank my ten other amigos, Kathy, Tom, Claire, John, Pat, Don, Patty, Ra, Wally, and Walt, without whom I would not have had thirty-five years of the best camaraderie any individual could experience.

Most especially, I want to give my heartfelt thanks and love to my daughter, Lori Riordan (who is an author in her own right). She was my guiding light. She provided me with encouragement every time I wanted to quit. She spent hours reading and editing my initial writings even while caring for three children, husband, home and school activities. She researched publishers and was my touchstone through this whole process providing me with her humor and savvy ideas about what worked and what did not. She even surprised me with a prototype so that I could envision the final product. This book would not have been published if not for her.

FOREWORD

Throughout my youth, I have watched my mother prepare some aspect of each meal for this gourmet club. I have gotten to know every member of the club personally and remember each family’s success, trials and tribulations as conveyed over the past 35 years. This group shared in each family’s birth, graduation, marriage and death, the joy and pain of which was comforted by a home-cooked meal. As I watch them wind down in the sunset of their years, I recall fondly the raucous laughter, the pleasant aromas and the loving friendships shared by these twelve people.

Though this is a story of their fun and adventures, it is also walk down memory lane for me. I distinctly recall the aromas in our house, some pleasant and some not so aromatic. I also remember the squealing laughter and incredulous antics taking place at the dining table. I remember eating the leftovers, of which there were few as the food tasted so good. I have tried to emulate my mother’s cooking abilities. At first she was a great Italian cook, much like her mother, my Nonna. But now, she is a great gourmet cook and the source to which I go every time I am having a dinner party. I even started my own gourmet club. Though it didn’t last as long, we still laugh about some of the memories created. I wish I had this book to have helped us solidify our group and kept it going.

A gourmet club can be a way for a foodie to try different things. It can be a way to share a meal with friends and have a few laughs. What I know to be true is that my parent’s gourmet club was a testament to the power of enduring friendships. It wasn’t about the food after a while, but about the support and love they could give each other several times a year. Isn’t it amazing how congregating around a table and sharing bread and wine can have a lasting impact on people? I would encourage every group of friends to consider creating such a gourmet club. Your lives will be enriched and your tummies will be delighted!

Lori Riordan

PROLOGUE

There we were, sitting at the table, the twelve of us, Bob to my right and Don to my left. Across the table were John, Ray, Kathy, Patti, and Pat. On each end were Wally and Walt. Tom was in the kitchen chatting with Claire. At our last get-together, we were celebrating Claire and John’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. While eating frog legs, one of Tom’s capped-teeth had fallen out in the middle of the meal. Tom tried desperately to discreetly put his tooth back into place. He thought he had secured it until he figured out that a piece of the frog leg had tucked under his tooth. It was only when he opened his mouth to laugh and his tooth flew across the table into Wally’s oyster soup, that everyone realized Tom was missing his front tooth. Tom, unabashedly, scooped his tooth out of Wally’s bowl. The conversation continued as though this was a normal occurrence. However it was evident that everyone was stifling their laughter as they carefully scooped up their soup.

That was our previous gourmet club meeting. Tonight, however, Tom was all teeth and all smiles. His daughter had graduated from college. While we ate broccoli pate for our French-themed meal, he proudly regaled us with stories from her graduation party. When we sat down to eat the soup course which was Bouillabaisse, Walt passed the bread basket to Tom. We all laughed heartily as Tom reached into the basket and pulled out a French baguette with wax teeth stuck in it. Thus, started the evening of the French gourmet meal.

These are just two examples of the merriment that abounds when you have a gourmet club. As we have, would you also want to experience the fun of a gourmet club? In this book, you will learn how we formed our club and the parameters we followed to make it successful. The recipes and guidelines included will be of assistance if you decide to form your own. Also, sprinkled throughout this book are stories gleaned from our around the world cooking journey. Learn from our stories and menus so that you, too, will experience the magic of a gourmet club. We always tried to make it home cooking no matter the country of origin. We had some amusing happenings, some cooking disasters, some poignant moments, a multitude of delicious meals, and great conversations, but the one attribute we always had at every meal, even if something was burnt, stale, or overdone, was laughter.

Today it is au courant to be a member of a book club. I am a member of several of them. In comparison, they are not nearly as much fun as a gourmet club. There does not seem to be the same camaraderies and intimacy that you enjoy from a dinner club.

To this day, even though we do not meet as often as we did in the beginning, we still share the bonds of our gourmet club and enjoy reminiscing about our journey in the world of gourmet cooking. It has been our experience that people really do love to connect over food. Thirty-five years later, this group, who were originally strangers, are still connected.

CHAPTER ONE

Why Should I Be Part Of A Gourmet Club?

If having a French, Italian, Irish, Japanese, Indonesian, or any other variety of cuisine with friends sounds appetizing and fun, then read on—this is the book for you. Picture yourself, your spouse/partner, and ten additional people eating an appetizing six-course dinner that is based on a theme and is set in an ambience that is both comfortable and friendly. Would you enjoy delicious, never-tried, sometimes exotic cuisine and not spend a mountain of money? To use a cliché, how does fine dining on a dime sound to you? In today’s economy, with the exorbitant cost of even the simplest of restaurant meals, a gourmet club allows you to eat a multi-coursed dinner, with drinks of your choice, at very little expense.

To be a member of a gourmet club is to have the foods of the entire world at your disposal. The number of cookbooks, magazines, newspapers, family classics, or recipes you can access on the internet are innumerable. A gourmet is defined as a person who enjoys high-quality food that is sophisticated, expensive, rare, or meticulously prepared. Call it by any name with which you are comfortable, a gourmet club is not necessarily just about food, sophistication, or expense. It is about having fun, enjoying other persons’ company, promoting scintillating conversation, and tasting food you may otherwise have never tried.

Adventuring into a gourmet club allows each member the ability to express their varied regional and ethnic heritage. The recipes and menus that follow are not meant to replace your collection of classics, but to enhance your repertoire. Cooking for a gourmet club will enable you to improve your cooking skills without even realizing it. Your cooking will become bolder. When following a recipe for a specific country or theme, you are forced to use ingredients you have never before used. Who knows, you may even add them to your pantry for future use.

The qualities of fine dining are often intangible, and the good company, delectable food, and stories of fun and mayhem you experience in a gourmet club are priceless. What a wonderful group of people we met in our club!

To demonstrate how easy being a member, at various dinners I have included the original correspondence we sent each other for various dinners. We were informal. We were uncritical of assignments—but not inflexible. We were creative in seeking authentic recipes from relatives, friends and neighbors. Today, there is a plethora of recipe books that are written to address a specific type of cooking or dieting. In our day, every new bride got either a Betty Crocker Cookbook or a Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. We relied on these books and family or friends tried and true recipes. Of course, Julia Child was the go-to for fancier cooking.

CHAPTER TWO

Beginning The Journey

When does our story really begin? How about thirty-five years ago? I know some of you reading this may not even have been born then, but having a gourmet club is timeless. My memories of this period are aided by a few things: a diary I kept listing menus from each dinner, yellowed newspaper clippings of recipes we used, letters from members with dates, times and recipes and of course, cookbooks. Mind you, we had to do the research ourselves as the internet was not in existence in our formative years.

Let’s go back all those years to 1975. Along with guidelines and recipes, I will try to impart in this book, the good feelings, camaraderie, cooking tips, and unbelievable stories that you, too, can experience if you decide to form your own gourmet club.

Thirty-five years ago on a lovely fall day, I received a call from Kathy whom I had met while taking the same college course. Kathy, the catalyst for our long journey, asked me if I would like to be one of the members of a gourmet club she was forming. I hesitated about acquiescing and, immediately, a hundred or more questions raced through my mind. I did not know what a gourmet club was. I wondered who the members of this club would be, how many people would be in it, and if I knew any of the other members. Also, I wondered what my obligations and responsibilities as a member would be. I must say that I entered this experience not only with a bit of trepidation but also with a sense of expectation and excitement about things to come.

It’s important for me to begin by establishing what I was not. I was not a chef. I was not a culinary school graduate. I was not an expert. I was not a connoisseur. I was not by any stretch of the imagination a gourmet cook nor did I have a prodigious repertoire of recipes that I used. With four children of my own, my cooking was more about feeding my family with filling, nutritious meals that, hopefully, were palatable. I did not have a particular love of food that went beyond the kind of affection I would feel towards any other necessity such as sleeping or breathing. I thought I did not have the time nor the ability for cooking what I thought was gourmet. When asked to be a part of the club, Claire said: Being a somewhat mediocre cook (but I must admit, I do make good jello), I was surprised but delighted. Little did I realize that the members would become lifetime friends.

We were young, and what I later learned, inexperienced in gourmet cooking. Thirty-five years later we still enjoy delving into a theme and following an unfamiliar recipe. Today, all forms of media are replete with new food fusions and styles of cooking. Because Kathy made our endeavor into gourmet cooking unthreatening and seamless, we came to enjoy years of fun, good friends, and delicious food. I hope I have whetted your appetite for the delectable dishes still to come.

CHAPTER THREE

Getting Down To The Nitty-Gritty

Although I agreed to be a member, I had no clue what Kathy had in mind for a gourmet club or what my part in it would be. Kathy explained the framework of the club, which, I feel, is extremely useful and helpful for having a successful club.

First Step: Selecting the Members

This step may seem mundane or unimportant to you but is integral for a successful, long-standing club. Since Kathy was the catalyst for the club, she selected the couples and each person she asked to join agreed to be a part of this new experience. Our group was comprised of Kathy, her sister, Pat, her sister’s friend Wally, Claire, Patti and me, women she had met through her various college courses or workplace. All were married, so with spouses our club was composed of twelve members. The most important element in choosing members is that all make a commitment to be in it for the long haul and to agree to be host once a year. Commitment is the sine qua non of a gourmet club’s survival. It is de rigueur if you want your club to succeed.

Although my husband and I did not know anyone else that had been asked to join, thirty-five years later we are all still friends. As it turned out, the fact that we were strangers in the beginning made for a very interesting group who then brought to the table very diverse experiences. In some ways, we were a disparate bunch with a range in age of ten or more years.

A good mixture of members are those with different skills, different work experiences, different personalities, different ethnic backgrounds, and different religions. Among this group we had some whose forte was story-telling, pontificating, some who were debaters, listeners, klutzes, equalizers, hypochondriacs, imbibers, party enliveners, those with deep religious convictions or experts in ad libbing hilarious one-liners. Many of these traits were interchangeable among us; we were a merry menagerie of folks unafraid to be ourselves. However, we always were tolerant of each other’s idiosyncrasies. Choosing a convivial group is as important as choosing the right combination of food in each theme.

We did have in common that we were all married (and still are) with all having children except for one couple. To demonstrate the mix of members, the group was composed of nurses, director of psychiatric services, educators (a college professor, a principal, and a teacher), a systems analyst, an accountant/financial advisor, an architect, a person in sales, and a business owner. Ethnicity included, Irish, Italian, German, Polish and English among others. Religious affiliations were Catholic, various Protestant sects and Jewish. This mix made for fascinating conversation and a cross-pollination of ideas and beliefs. Our discussions resonated with mind-boggling ideas and, sometimes, we even solved the problems of the world in one evening (or so we believed)!

Second Step: How Many Members

Ideally a gourmet club should be composed of six couples/twelve people. One reason for that number is that usually most china and silverware services contain twelve place settings. Also, the number works well for the different courses in a meal. No one person shoulders the burden of making a full meal. The host prepares the entrée. Often the vegetable can be worked into the entrée and made by the host. However, with some of the themes a member is assigned to make the vegetable course; it all depends on the complexity of the vegetable recipe and the theme of the meal. One couple makes appetizers and one does the dessert. According to the theme chosen, the remaining couples are assigned either soup, salad, or bread. In some meals, more than one entrée was part of our repertoire and other courses were eliminated.

Hosting a dinner may seem daunting. With ten people coming you want your food selection to be heartwarming but relatively fuss free. Try to make your entrée show stopping but simple as possible. The dinners really should be fun, for the host as well as the guests. With all members having a part in preparing the meal, the host is able to participate and not have to spend his/her time in the kitchen cooking, tasting and seasoning. In this way, cooking something either assigned or chosen is never felt to be a chore and no one person shouldered the burden of making a full meal.

Another reason to adhere to six is that the dinner is held once every two months. With six, each couple serves as host only once each year. Setting it up this way made all of us look forward to each club reunion and did not make these get-togethers feel burdensome or boring. Usually in two months’ time something new and interesting had occurred and we got to delve into each person’s viewpoint on the incident and enjoyed a new story.

Another strategy is to have a list of possible alternates who can be used when someone, for some unforeseen circumstance, cannot make the prescheduled date. When a couple cannot be present on the agreed-upon day, you can either use the alternate list or any of the other club members may suggest a couple to invite to fill in for the missing members.

Our experience with this strategy was that the couples invited to fill in appeared to enjoy the evening, especially since invitees were made to feel welcome by other club members. Surprisingly, to the dismay of these invitees, this did not happen frequently, which proves how much we looked forward to attending the gourmet club dinners. We are still the original twelve.

The following incident is another story from our club and an example of our dedication, and how much all of us looked forward to our dinners. On the assigned night of a club dinner, one member did not feel well but