Sour Cherry Farm hosted “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, the Goat Herd book club’s most recent selection. We had a lively discussion about savages and utopia, of expectations and dreams lost. And of course we laughed. A lot.
For hors d’ouevres, I went with cues from chapter 12:
Pierced by every word that was spoken, the tight balloon of Bernard’s happy self-confidence was leaking from a thousand wounds. Pale, distraught, abject and agitated, he moved among his guests, stammering incoherent apologies, assuring them that next time the Savage would certainly be there, begging them to sit down and take a carotene sandwich, a slice of vitamin A pâté, a glass of champagne-surrogate. They duly ate, but ignored him; drank and were either rude to his face or talked to one another about him, loudly and offensively, as though he had not been there.
We have three kinds of pate here, duck liver mousse, country pork and pork and chicken liver:
Plus, several accompaniments, such as ginger cashews and many different pickles.
I poured cava, which is certainly a champagne surrogate if I’ve ever seen one.
Cornichons, pickled plums, pickled carrots, olives and pickled mushrooms:
Red wine:
We started the conversation on the porch.
John is goatherd of the Goat Herd tonight:
Kris reads aloud:
It got a little chilly, so we moved inside and started a fire:
The laughing begins in earnest:
Supper was Posole with New Mexican Chilies, in honor of John the Savage:
And for dessert, I made Chocolate Toffee Cookies.
Hunna:
Rory:
And the gang:
Nobody look at Irene!
Loads of fun. Next meeting: Rory leads On the Road at Kris and Tom’s on Dec. 9.
