Julia Child Night #7

Greetings and happy Monday!  I hope everyone had a great weekend!  Mine was awesome as it was full of good food and time spent with family and friends. We celebrated our 7th Julia Child Night on Saturday and it was so much fun!  It was really fun to make some New Orleans-inspired dishes.  I'll let the pictures (mostly) do the talking!

My aunt, uncle, brother and I spent 5 hours on Friday doing prep work for the big meal!  It's a lot of work to put on an event like this but it's so much fun and it's good to have excuse to gather the family together!  We had 26 guests this year so quite the big group! My brother and his family came from Chicago as they had to see what it was all about; I have a feeling they'll be back for future events!

Even Anna, one of our youngest guest, donned an apron for the event!

Before the event got started, though, we had a curve ball thrown at us. My brother, who was one of the main cooks for the event, coaches my nephew's football team and they had a game on Saturday afternoon.  Unfortunately, my nephew got tackled from behind, which was a total cheap shot, and broke his wrist badly. He is such a tough kid, though, and handled the pain really well. He ended up getting a temporary cast and will go back for a full consultation this week.

The event went on as planned, though!  We started off with our usual cheese course. This year I purchased a Minnesota-shaped slate cheeseboard because when you love Minnesota as much as I do, it's something you need!

Spiced nuts, crackers and cheese all lined up for our guests

Our signature drink was a hurricane, which was dangerously good!!

While the food is amazing, the people at the event are what really makes it special!

Phil and I!

My mom, aunt Barb (aka Julia Child aunt) and I

My sister-in-law Emily and I!

Before we knew it, it was time to sit down and eat!  Our 'amuse bouche' was a small serving of an oyster po'boy.  My brothers have made these several times and they are so good!

Po'boys assembled and ready to cut.

The servings were small as we had so much other food ahead!

Our next course was a gumbo-style soup. The recipe called for Turtle (!!!) but we used beef instead. We used Julia Child's recipe for the beef broth that was the foundation of the soup.  The soup was served with corn bread.

The main course was a boudin-stuffed turkey breast, rice & beans, and collard greens. I had never heard of boudin but it's a sausage that is made with rice in it.  And just in case there wasn't enough food on that plate, we also included a serving of andouille sausage that was also in the beans. My brother made both the boudin and andouille sausage, with the help of my aunt and uncle, and it was so good!  I had never had collard greens before but they reminded me of a cabbage dish my mom made when we were growing up.

After the main course, we took a bit of a break before serving dessert as everyone was so stuffed at this point. That break gave us the perfect opportunity to take our annual "apron photo."  My brother is the guy in the chef's outfit!

So many cool aprons!

Then it was time for dessert! My Chicago brother took the lead on this and made his recipe for bananas foster. He flambed it which was neat to see.

We served the bananas foster on buckwheat crepes that my cousin's girlfriend's mom had made.  She's a retired French teacher so knows a thing or two about French cooking!  We topped the dessert off with my sister-in-law's homemade vanilla ice cream.  It was soooo good!!

And there you have it!  Another successful event! I wonder where Julia will go next year?  Only time will tell!