One Hot Date!

A great night to talk about a hot book! It was about minus 5 degrees out on this Minnesota wintry evening. But, thoughts of our book, Inferno by Dan Brown, kept us warm.

As we were handed a generous glass of Apothic red wine, we noticed the gigantic screen above Marie's fireplace was playing Liszt's Dante Symphony for our pleasure. As the music ebbed and flowed, we were treated to scenes of purgatory and hell!

We were able to overcome the intense atmosphere and talk about things other than Dante, as well. It was nice catching up with everyone. As Mike was still on a tough work schedule, he was not able to join us. But we each had a drink for you. You were quite tipsy, Mike! :)

We enjoyed some finger food including shrimp, heart of palm and macadamia nuts as dinner cooked, and the wonderful smells wafted out to us. Soon, we were dishing up a delectable meal. Marie made a delicious Beef Roulade, along with Spinach Pasta and a perfectly seasoned Roasted Broccoli dish.

Inferno was an enjoyable book, well researched, with tons of opportunities to use Google to follow up and learn about places and things described in the book. It was fun to look up Hagia Sophia and see the amazing pictures of the place in the book. And, by the way, learn how to pronounce it, too (ah-hee-ah so-fee-ah) and that it resides in Constantinople and on and on.

This experience plants the idea in the mind that a trip to Florence, Italy or Rome or Turkey would be a fun (and educational!) experience. Bucket list, people!

Jarby produced a mask from Italy that, amazingly, when turned to the back had a code written on it, just like the one in the book! (PPPPPPP) I said wow was that really there? Jarby winked and said, "Yes."

Louise was a sport and allowed photos taken of her with the mask on. Perfect design and coloring for our gathering, along with Louise's choice of dress - her flaming jacket was perfect!

Speaking of flames, little did we know that we would experience it first hand!

We should have got a clue when Marie was testing out her automatic flame lighter during dinner! HMMMM... what was she planning?

After dinner was cleared, Marie began making space on the table and saying "Hey, you might want to move back and make room....!"

What in the world?

Well, it turns out it was a flaming dessert.  Marie brought out the Cherries Jubilee with a flourish and a pretty nice flame!

Well, the best thing about it was that it tasted amazing! I think Marie thought of everything, we felt very pampered with our french vanilla ice cream, coffee, more wine, and then chocolate and taffy treats.

It was interesting to talk about the books we want to read coming up. We tend to go toward the darker, mysterious, heavier kinds of novels and we all kinda snapped out of it at the same time and said "Hey! We should read some lighter fare!"

And, alas, we could not think of ONE title to recommend in that genre.

So, research will abound and we will come up with some titles to choose from for our next gathering.

Sandy offered to host the next gathering if timing works out and we look forward to that sometime around the end of March.

A night to remember!