Our ladies book club met recently for a dinner and discussion of Courting Morrow Little
by Laura Frantz. This sweeping tale of romance unfolds in 18th-Century Kentucky, so friend Missy Jones and I planned an evening fit for the pioneers we came to know in the book. We kept our centerpieces simple, gathering bouquets of azaleas and wildflowers from our yards to display in Missy's collection of antique pewter mugs. Pioneers would not have fussed over elaborate floral designs, we reasoned, so we dropped our fresh-cut flowers into the mugs and set them on the table with candles and greenery. 
Blue and white seemed a classic choice for our affair, so we paired my late mother's Spode Blue Room
goblets with friend Nancy Itson's Blue Danube
dinnerware and Missy's antique linens. 
Missy brought this antique milk bucket, which looked beautiful filled with baby's breath and displayed on our food table with a well-worn Bible and antique wooden cheese board. A rocking chair and quilt added to the rustic ambiance of the room.
Missy greeted guests with a delicious gourmet cheese tray and refreshingly light punch to start our evening off right. We asked all the ladies to bring a favorite spring dish and enjoyed a lovely assortment of salads and sides for dinner. I am always amazed at the wonderful balance of flavors we enjoy at our book club gatherings. I prepared our dessert and did some research on popular desserts during pioneer days. I learned that chocolate was not common to the time period. Bread pudding was a possibility, but it seemed heavy for our springtime soiree. So I decided to make a fruit-filled raspberry pound cake. I am not going to share the recipe just yet, as the cake fell after I took it out of the oven. It looked like a disaster, and I was heartbroken to think of starting over, so I gave it a taste before throwing it out. And it was delicious! So, the lesson learned was that a flopped cake is just waiting to be turned into a trifle. This turned out to be an even better option than displaying the cake because the individual trifles set at each place added a little more color to the table.
I will share more details of our Courting Morrow Little
book club event in upcoming posts, so drop by again soon!
