a gathering of minds at the blue plate
Last night was the first Edmonton Foodie gathering. First and foremost, a big thank you to Sharon, Hanne, and Courtney for putting the effort and time into making this meet up possible. I imagine the thought was to meet in an independent restaurant, centrally located and willing to cater to largish tables. How many options are there like this? Who knows, but we ended up at the Blue Plate Diner (great choice) on a very cold evening.
Having never participated in anything like this, it was a strange sort of anticipation leading up to the night. Meeting and eating with a group of strangers on some random Thursday may sound a little unusual to some. In fact telling my friends I'm about to go out for dinner with people I've never met, garnered a few 'ooookay Chris' kind of looks. But unusual or uncomfortable it wasn't. That is the weird part of reading blogs. You get to know one side of that person so that first awkward initial moment never really exists. Which is a good thing if you ask me. The evening was great from the get-go. I think the group ended up talking for almost 3 hours until yours truly made a grab for my jacket, and the domino effect kicked in.
I do hope we will be able to set up another gathering, hopefully based on a round table or a game of musical chairs as some of us were stretched to far away to communicate more than the basics. Now onto the group. Besides Sharon and Mac, who knew Diane, I don't think anyone else had met before. The group was rounded out with, Marianne and Zed, Hanne and Carlo, Maki, Isabelle, Courtney and Brooke.
Thanks again, for the evening. I've been inspired to make bread today!
5 comments:
I'm glad you guys were talking about the bread cookbooks last night... I found the Peter Reinhart bagel recipe on a blog from a guy in Turkey, and while the mixture of ingredients doesn't look quite right (they are definitely a New York or San Francisco bagel), I'm definitely going to utilize some of the techniques.
I went to the library this morning and now have a good pile of Jewish cookbooks to look at. There's a promising recipe in one that we will tinker with this weekend, hopefully with the addition of a pizza stone... maybe a bread/bagel trade if this batch works out?
It was nice meeting you too Chris!
Here's some extra exclamation points for you too ;-)
!!!
I like to think once you discover Peter Reinhart..you are a changed baker. I was also going to say, what about the kosher cookbooks, but you beat me too it. Keep us informed.
Thanks Maki!
Thanks for coming yesterday Chris! We'll definitely have to do a round a musical chairs next time!
I've met Sharon and Mack before, so it wasn't quite as brave of Carlo and me to show up. It was fun, wasn't it? I'm always glad to meet another baker, particularly one who's a Reinhart fan! And I can't wait to see your lentil cookie recipe.
Post a Comment