Good Food + Good Friends = Great Times

So I'm in this little book group (there's only half a dozen of us), and we meet every month or so to discuss the latest book we may or may not have finished. We all do our best, but certainly don't expect to have all finished the book given our busy lives. It's totally acceptable though to drop a spoiler or two though during our meetings. :)

This month we read "My Life in France", a memoir by Julia Child. I was certainly aware of who Julia was, but didn't consider myself a fan until the movie "Julie and Julia" came out recently.  It very much peaked my curiosity about her, and her love of cooking and her general "joie de vivre" were truly contagious as portrayed by Meryl Streep. I felt compelled to find out of this was an accurate representation of who she was, and after reading the book, I'm beyond convinced that she was quite the amazing and memorable woman.

We all tend to latch onto a theme from the books we read and try to carry this into the food we share at the groups. French cooking was no easy task to take on for this gathering, but we all did our best to prepare a relevant dish. My choice was a cake called "Reine de Saba" - a chocolate rum cake with almonds.

I'm no baker, but I tackled the recipe and feel that it was quite the success - as you can see it wasn't a fancy cake, but it at least resembled what it was intended to be. And the reviews were overwhelmingly positive - a "restaurant quality effort" that resembled a "yummy truffle". Not bad!

All in all I'll likely try a few more French recipes and as Julia says "make no apologies" for however they may turn out. Tant pis!