Book Club – Plague Edition

Bruce and I hosted book club this weekend. The book was Jerri’s pick: Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague. Who doesn’t love a good plague book, right? Of course, this is our book club so only two people had finished reading it, two more were about three-quarters of the way through, one bought it but hadn’t started it, and two … well, let’s just move on.

Anyway, just because Bruce and I weren’t the two people who’d finished the book, doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with plague-themed food. Actually, the food wasn’t so much plague-related, but the effects were. Bruce made a delicious cioppino but served it with dry ice. Here are some pictures.

First, he had to work out what to put the dry ice in so as to not cool down the soup super fast or break the pot. Finn’s aluminum cup saved the day.

Trying out the vessel

Here he is getting ready for table presentation.

The master at work

Spooky

And voila!

The Plague meal

Later, he brought out a bowl of dry ice just to keep the mood going.

Playing with smoke

It’s really more impressive in video form, so here’s a 4-second video.

Towards the end of the evening we broke out a bottle of champagne to toast Craig (and the absentee Laura) on their recent engagement. The men-folk put dry ice in their champagne. Here’s Craig.

A smokey toast for Craig's engagement

And Bren.

Bren

And, of course, Bruce.

Bruce