I have mentioned before that every second Tuesday of the month, I go to a gathering of ladies where we invite a chef to teach and cook for us. The call starts at 9am, followed by a short talk of a guest speaker (topic varies every month from life of a Saint to an adopted community to household tips… mostly “food for the soul”… after all, this is an Opus Dei group), then the cooking begins. The fee depends on the cost of ingredients and how many will attend. If there’s excess in the collection, it goes to a fund. Our cooking theme last Tuesday is Al Fresco Dining, hosted by the J*****z couple who cooked for us. Incidentally, this husband-and-wife team are not chefs, but they LOVE to cook and entertain.
Our menu:
- Foie Gras Salad
- Wild Mushroom Soup
- Rosemary Lemon Chicken
- Fettuccine with Blue Cheese
- Chocolate Bread Pudding
- Coffee or Tea
Next, we did the dessert since the chocolate bread pudding will take some time to bake. This recipe is from her daughter-in-law who is a professional pastry chef. This pudding is to die for!
Making the Fetuccine with Blue Cheese. This pasta is very rich and sinful. Her sauce is a mixture of blue cheese, cream cheese and half-and-half. Other ingredients include pine nuts, torn spinach, and parma ham.
Among the recipes, this Foie Gras salad is my favorite. Just imagine: mixed salad greens with halved seedless grapes, cherry tomatoes and chopped walnuts drizzled with fruity vinaigrette dressing then topped with thinly-sliced pears, foie gras, and grilled scallops and prawns. YUMMY! It’s a meal on its own.
This is my group. We headed to the garden to eat. Back there you see the chicken being grilled. There were twenty-two of us who attended and I am the youngest. While they talk about their children’s graduation, children getting married, their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I talked about my eight-year old son and six-and-a-half year old twins.
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That night:
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KQOTD. I noticed that Marco, for quite some time now, writes my first name in all his drawings and letters to me although he calls me Mommy when he talks to me. His older brother Raf reprimanded him before, telling him that he is being disrespectful to me. Marco hasn’t changed as seen from his latest drawing and it has started to bother me. So I asked him. Me: Marco, how come you wrote I love you Bern and not Mommy? Marco: That’s because I want the people to know that my drawing is only for Bern so that other mommies will not mistake that my drawing is for them. (Ah, may katwiran nga!)