Book club early fall dinner

My book club came to visit!

To give you an idea of the importance of this group to me, we have been together for more than 20 years. In the early days, we celebrated each other’s pregnancies and reveled in our kids’ first days of kindergarten . Today, we’re celebrating graduations, weddings and grandchildren, and comforting each other at the loss of parents and long-time family dogs. We are all empty nesters as of 2020, and we are marveling at each other’s choices on how to spend this next phase of our lives. So you can imagine how excited I was to have them visit Wexford Lane for the first time.

We have 10 members (not all pictured here), so we each get the chance to host the group once a year. (Someone gets March-April and someone gets June-July to work around vacations and family events.) The host picks the book, sets the date and makes dinner. That frees everyone else up to read and enjoy for most of the year!

The first visit of this very special group of ladies to our new house occurred in September 2019. When I host, I like to take culinary cues from the book, but we read The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, and there weren’t any fabulous meals in that book, so I was free to match the menu to the setting instead.

We started on the patio with a simple cheese board with crackers. For the main course, I served Summer Carbonara (full of roasted cherry tomatoes and burrata cheese) from Half-Baked Harvest. With a large salad, this recipe can feed a crowd. I served it with Half Baked Harvest’s Roasted Cauliflower Salad with Creamy Honey Mustard Vinaigrette.

I’m a firm believer in making as much ahead as possible so that I can enjoy the party as much as my guests, so I had roasted the chickpeas and cauliflower for the salad and the tomatoes for the pasta dish before guests arrived. The heirloom cherry tomatoes I used deserved their own photoshoot.

September celebrates the end of summer’s bounty and the beginning of autumn’s savory flavors, so I rounded out the meal with Ina Garten’s apple crisp, served warm with vanilla ice cream.

For the table setting, I wanted the view of our property to take a starring role, so I did a simple neutral setting that hinted at the fall splendor to come. Simple white plates, copper chargers and natural woven grass mats were paired with glass tumblers and my husband’s grandmother’s early 20th century silver.

For the centerpiece, I used a wooden dough bowl filled with green and white pumpkins and squash, grapevine balls and a few hydrangea blossoms. (If you look closely, you can see a small vintage wooden bird in the middle as a nod to our book.) White napkins with raffia ties and lots of white votives completed the simple, neutral scene that just hints at fall.

It was a wonderful evening. And even though it was a longer drive than they usually have, the group stayed until later than usual — a combination of a great book to discuss, the pleasure of each other’s company, and wonderful food and setting to invite them to linger. Can’t wait’ til they return next year!