Cookbook Book Club - April

There are several purposes to the Cookbook Book Club

1 - to teach us new things

2 - to have a great meal together

3 - to stretch our wings and cook dishes we might never try

Sara was the hostess in April and her choice:

Now "diet" and Cookbook Book Club doesn't seem to compute

We're not meeting to diet but to cook and taste new and different foods --

But we accepted the challenge

And that is another purpose of the Cookbook Book Club --

to challenge us in the kitchen!

So we all looked up Keto

And the Pyramid . . . 

And as we said at the end of the evening,

we had one of the best meals that we've ever had

at the Cookbook Book Club

We started with appetizers

Donna brought two

A tray of "taco cups"

Taco meat filling in cheese cups.    Topped with tomato and sour cream on some

and sour cream on the others.

We all adored them!

They were good  and completely Keto!

Donna's other appetizer

Avocado stuffed eggs.    We all thought they were good and that the avocado filling was very good . . . 

Rhonda had a hard challenge this month --

How in the heck do you do a "starch" when the theme is Keto?

She did as a lot of Keto dieters do -- she made "potato" salad with cauliflower.

We all liked it and Rhonda said that she would definitely make it again!

A challenge of another sort:

I had salads.    Salads mostly being "keto", I decided to take an old favorite non-keto recipe

and make it keto!

An old tried and true -- broccoli cauliflower salad with green onions and green olives and a dressing made with Mayo and Ott's dressing

Ott's if full of sugar so I made a keto approved version.

I thought the "keto" salad tasted as good as the non-keto versions that I've made

for the last 40 years!

Liz had a salad as well and chose a tossed sald with all kinds of vegetables, topped with bacon and the most amazing basil dressing that I've ever had

Michelle got vegetable and she roasted broccoli -- which she had never done before -- sprinkled with Parmesan cheese

It was a very tasty vegtable

Rita is our bread baker and you know that whenever she has bread, you're in for a treat.     She had a challenge this month, however, as bread is not really one of the keto approved foods.     She found a recipe and made the most amazing bread.    You would never know that it was "lo carb".    

But then she's always been a magician with yeast and flour!

(It was so good that I ate two pieces!)

The hostess always provides the main course and Sara did a wonderful pork chop dish for us topped with green onion and Parmesan cheese.     She couldn't have picked a better entree had she known what we all were bringing!

It was a nice well-balanced plate of food

And it was delicious

Some of us even had seconds for it was really good!

Rita may have had a challenge with bread

but our dessert people also had a challenge 

But they were up for it . . . 

We had

Lemon balls made from cream cheese and lemon and rolled in coconut

Carrot cake balls -- carrots, cream cheese and coconut

Although there wasn't any "cake" in these balls.

Belynda did a great job with these two desserts.

Angela was the other dessert person and she brought almost frozen berries

and white chocolate "soup" -- Oh, my was that ever good.    I thought I saw several of our group eyeing the bowl of soup and wondering if they could just go to a corner and finish it!

It was a fun time -- as it always is

And we're eager for next month when Angela will host

and the theme is Jamie Oliver!