Supper club!

I cannot believe that I have not blogged about supper club yet! We have been doing it for the past 13 years, mostly, minus a few hiatuses.

The host picks the theme and prepares the main dish. Everyone else fills in – appetizers, sides, dessert, drinks – based on the theme. We sometimes even dress up to fit the theme. Oh, and one other rule is that you have to try something you’ve never made before. So if you regularly make fried frog legs, then that can’t be your dish. It can be mine, because that’s not something I make regularly. Or ever. And it can’t be store bought. If you want to bring baklava to Greek night, you’ve gotta make it yourself. No running out to Hala Cafe’ to buy some.

Since we are only responsible for one dish, this gives us a chance to try something new. In all the years we’ve done it, the recipes we’ve tried have all been good. There was only one time, Indian night at the Pellum’s house, where  the majority of the people did not care for a particular dish. We lovingly called them “goat balls.” They were a dessert type dish made out of goat cheese, I think? The Pellum’s son, Christian, liked them and I think Rebekah did too but that was it.

Until this time.

But more on that later…

This past weekend, the Holmquist family hosted, and since it’s September, and September means football, they picked football as the theme.

The idea was to relate the hors d’oeuvre/drink/sweet to our favorite football team (professional, college, high school or pee wee) through food color, food choice, food related to location of team. (Think buffalo wings for that Buffalo team, and Duck a l’Orange for the Mighty Ducks. Okay so they aren’t football. You get where I’m going with this, right?) We were also encouraged to wear our game gear and/or face paint in support of our teams.

Since UF and Clemson are our alma maters, we prepared a peach/blueberry crisp (orange and blue/purple – two birds with one stone!). Since we have some gluten free eaters, I tried a gf recipe (bad idea). We also made homemade peach ice cream to go with it. And since we are in the south, we made boiled peanuts which is a great snack food to buy in Waldo on the way to a Gator game.

Other couples made pork shish kabob spears (FSU), beer cheese soup (Wisconsin), fried gator and swamp water (UF-no, really! *gator*!! As in the reptile!), smoked pulled pork sliders with coleslaw, white BBQ sauce with fried jalapeños and Alabama Slammers (‘Bama – might I add an aside here that Kory prepared this all by herself, from scratch, with a baby on her hip. Yes folks, she smoked the pork herself AND battered and fried slices of jalapeño. [Her husband had taken the boys to a Gator game so she was flying solo.] The woman is amazing. Ok. Enough of that. Let’s continue.), chili (Auburn), Jaguar cake (Jacksonville Jaguars), garnet and gold cream cheese brownies (FSU), and potatoes au gratin (Couch Potatoes – team Couch. My brother is not a sports fan at all so they represented themselves – complete with team shirts. Too cute.).

Unfortunately, my crisp was bad. People were kind and ate some. My husband (LOVE that man) had two helpings. But it was BAD. It tasted gritty, like I had made it with sand. I guess it was the coconut flour. Not even the ice cream was very good. Also gritty. (Whaa? What’s up with that? There’s no coconut flour in that!) Edible but certainly not a recipe I’ll make again. And I made a LOT of it. Sigh. (I had a whole BOX of peaches to use!) But the boiled peanuts were good. I made a lot of those too. I had lots of leftovers of all three.

Fortunately, everyone else’s food was good so we didn’t starve. And there were plenty of other desserts too so again, no lack of sugar-laden treats. Look at the Jaguar cake.

 Cool, huh? When you cut into it, there are spots! Love that Pinterest! (I knew you’d want to know: cake pops baked into the cake. Genius.)

I forgot to snap a picture when we assembled the group to record a short birthday message for a great friend. So I’ll share that with you instead.

And there you have it! Supper club! Are you in one? What’s yours like if you are?