I joined two book clubs this summer. One is virtual. One is in person. I’m excited for both and they both serve a different purpose. I love books. I love reading. I love “self-help” books. I love food. I love eating. I love cooking new things. My books (and book club) are self-helpy and foodie.
First – My Virtual Book Club (The Pretty Dish)
I follow a foodie blogger who has the most amazing recipes. Her name is Jessica Merchant and she has the blog “How Sweet Eats.” (Check it out!) I want to be her when I grow up. Never mind that she’s younger than me (probably by at least a decade!). But anyway, her recipes always look fabulous, and she has a new cookbook that was just released this spring, “The Pretty Dish.” (Check this out too!)It’s full of beautiful pictures of delish-sounding recipes. I just got the book, so I’m just now planning on making some of the recipes this week!
What does this have to do with a book club? Well, it’s a book, and she’s doing a virtual book club which I kinda think is the coolest idea ever. The idea of the book club is to make recipes from her book each month. She picks several recipes for the month, and then you can make them. There’s a facebook group and you can share pics of your dishes when you make them.
For June, she picked 5 recipes. I picked 3 for us to try, and I’ve already made 2. The first one I made was the bacon blue chopped shrimp salad.
It was pretty delish! This salad had butter lettuce in it, which I had never tried before. It was really good, and it actually tasted buttery. The shrimp was cooked in the bacon grease and garlic so how could you go wrong with that?! Funny thing, I picked my kids up lunchables (don’t judge) for dinner thinking that they wouldn’t like the salad. 2 of my kids , however, gobbled it down. I was glad they liked it and branched out, but that meant less for me.
We also tried the salted peanut butter mousse with toasted marshmallow. Except mine was not salted or toasted. But, again, it was fabulous. It’s really rich, so I think this recipe would be excellent in a smaller size, like a shot glass. Next time we have a get-together, I’m going to try the shot glass size out.
Also, because I can’t leave well enough alone, I decided to try it with chocolate too!
Chocolate and peanut butter go together so well. There’s a candy, you know? I added a drizzle of chocolate over the peanut butter mousse and then on top of the chocolate. I’m already scheming my next mousse concoction. I think it’s going to be great, so I’ll let you know when I try it!
The final recipe of June that I’m most intrigued by is her pitaya bowls and/or pops recipe. I had never heard of pitaya until about two weeks ago. And then I only heard about it because my son wanted to get a dragonfruit from the store. Dragonfruit = pitaya (apparently). Again, I’d never heard of dragon fruit. I don’t know if I’ve been living under a rock, but regardless, I’d never heard of it. My goal in June is to try to find this fruit that I’ve never heard of and make a popsicle out of it. The goal may be elusive and/or expensive. I thought I had found pitaya at the store right next to my house, but it was $6.99 a fruit (isn’t that crazy?!). But alas, it was not pitaya, I figured out it was a guava (which I also don’t have much knowledge about). If anybody has any pointers on pitaya (or guava for that matter), let me know! I’ll let you know how it goes!
Second – My In-Person Book Club (Present over Perfect)
The book we’re reading this summer is “Present over Perfect” by Shauna Niequest. It’s about leaving behind the push/quest for perfection (frantic living) and pursuing/enjoying a simpler way of living. This concept is something that is really important to me. For quite some time, I’ve been feeling that we (our family) needs a simpler existence and needs to enjoy doing things/experiences more than getting more stuff. Last summer, the motto was: “Less stuff, more experiences.” I’ve just recently figured out that I kinda like to have things perfect. It really wasn’t on my radar that I was living that way. What was on my radar was that I was exhausted and not really satisfied with anything. I’m hoping this book provides even more insights on having a more meaningful existence. And I’m also excited that there is a group of like-minded women getting ready to embark on the journey too.
I’ve never really succeeded at doing a book club before. The first book club I attempted to do was an interesting experience as I just picked a random book club from a local bookstore with a book that I thought I would like. The book (can’t remember the name unfortunately) was not that great. It was a struggle to get through. When I went to the book club, the members said it was the worst book they had read in 3 years. And the book club met in the basement of the store, and everybody had apparently been in the book club for years (if not decades). I was a newbie. They were all very nice, but it wasn’t my cup of tea.
I then tried to do a second book club over a book I love! “The Gifts of Imperfection” by Brene Brown. (By the way, I love anything by her! If you haven’t read her books, you should!). Unfortunately for me, it was bad timing because it fell during a time I was really busy and I just didn’t have time to read the book again or make the once a month meetings because I was usually working.
Soo, the third time is the charm, right?!
Here’s to being present over perfect and enjoying books and yummy food this summer!
Lori says
Asian stores usually have dragon fruit.
Stephanie says
Thanks! Will look for it there!