Basque Dinner

Bill and I went to a Basque dinner last night. We bought seats to it at the Rotary Christmas auction. I was a little worried. We woke up to pouring down rain so I hoped we would be eating inside. Luckily, the rain quit by dinnertime and we also ate inside.

We have been to Basque dinners and restaurants in Nevada before so we were really looking forward to it. The Basque people come from northern Spain and part of France and were primary sheepherders. They migrated to Idaho and Nevada for the most part because it was like home.

Julia Anderson from Rotary hosted the dinner on her property. It was about a 40 mile drive for us out past Woodland, Cedar Creek Grist Mill and the Green Mountain School. She has 20 acres of property out there and the part that she lives on is very wooded. She is originally from Idaho and although she isn't Basque, she "adopted" the Basque food for serving her dinner.

The dinners that we have been to before were several courses of things like a stew and T-bone steak. It has been awhile for me so I can't remember what all was served. So last night's dinner was slightly different than I expected but it was excellent. They cooked the lamb over a spit for about 5 hours. So the pictures are of the cooking and carving of the lamb. They also served a wonderful salad with apples and cheese in it, green beans, and a bread kind of like a crescent but it was stuffed with seasoned potatoes (and that was so good that I had three of them--such a pig). Dessert was a chocolate pie with chocolate graham cracker crust, whipped cream and espresso beans. Everything was wonderful and we had wonderful dinner companions as well.