Tropical Cooking Club

As the host for this year's January installment of cooking club, I decided to do a "tropical" theme. This winter has been so brutally cold, I figured it would be a great chance to escape the chill and pretend we were somewhere warm. Wouldn't you know, we got a winter storm this afternoon!



It snowed all day.



There was lots of texting back and forth about whether or not to cancel the dinner.



We canceled it, we uncanceled it.



But ultimately, we soldiered on and everyone braved the weather to come to my tropical paradise.



WELCOME!!! I had the fireplace roaring and the house was toasty and warm.



Summer got us started with a delicious tropical cocktail. Mango Passion! Mango, vodka, lime and champagne.



Cheers!



Sluuuurp.



Aloha!



Yumi brought a delicious pot of soup.



We kicked things off with Valerie's scallop papaya ceviche. I LOVED this. I love scallops the most. This was too scallopy for a few of the ladies at the table, but it was all I could do not to gobble theirs down too! I knew I had to save room for the future, though.



Yumi's Vietnamese sour tamarind soup! This had jumbo shrimp and catfish in it and a delightful sweet-sour flavor. There's pineapple in there!



Nancy made a seaweed salad with carrots.



Yum. We were all in agreement that this was delicious!



Then we took a break for another round of Summer's tropical cocktails! Blue Hawaiians this time.



Cheers!



For my dish, I made Thai Shrimp Halibut Curry.



This was awesome! I love halibut so much. Coconutty and limy – we felt like we were on the beach!



Emily capped of the evening with a scrumptious coconut flan. Oh, hi!



What winter? What snow? We felt like we were in a tropical paradise!!!



Aloha!