When I was a kid, my family never fondued. I’m sure that my parents must have had a fondue pot somewhere in the house–after all, they got married in 1969 and had me in 1972 and Jesus Christ people! It was the 70s! (They also never had key parties either and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. Did I mention it was the 70s?!?!!)

Fortunately for me, I went to college in the early 90s, when all things from the 1970s were all the rage (except, sadly, key parties). A few of my sorority sisters and I were all into the 1970s–disco, the Hustle and fondue. None of us had fondue pots, but we thought it sounded cool. I hung onto the idea of fondue during my 20s and, when I got married in 2000, registered for a fondue pot from what was then Hudsons. One of my disco loving sorority sisters bought it for me and I vowed to make use of it. I haven’t used it every month, but it’s gotten quite a bit of use. This past weekend, I trotted the fondue pot out again and used it for a lady food blogger event.

Some of the lady food bloggers and I went to Victoria‘s house, armed with our fondue pots. My friends Jeannette and Tricia had the awesome 70s fondue pots–goldenrod (which is slightly lighter than harvest gold, in case you were wondering) and avocado green, respectively. Mine is plain black, but it does its job with the heart and soul of a burnt orange pot. (I do wish I had a burnt orange pot, btw, as it would complete the 70s Trifecta).

At Victoria’s house, we met up with Victoria’s neighbor Shayne and our fellow food blogger Amy. We spent a few minutes getting the fondues pot set up, initially going with this set up:

Above you see Victoria’s beef broth fondue pot & Jeannette’s hot oil fondue pot. There is also a delicious spread of dips that Jeannette brought, including champagne-mustard, peanut sauce and some sort of ginger thing. Victoria put out a lovely spread of veggies and beef and Jeannette brought along a lovely spread of meats.

There is my fondue pot, in all its glory. I made pizza fondue (my canned tomato sauce, Penzey’s pizza spices, mozzarella and parmesan cheeses). I put some green peppers (frozen, from my garden!) on top at some point (not sure if they are in this picture since I just see code right now and not the picture and sadly, the code is silent as to whether my peppers are in the picture or not).

Cheese!!! Cheese fondue!!! Compliments of Tricia.

We tried this “fondue station” approach for a minute and then realized that it would work much better at the table, so here we go:

There was beer (I brought along New Holland’s Sun Cap and Bell’s Batch 9000. Amy kindly brought along Dragon’s Milk which was about the most awesome beer I’ve had recently. Yow!) and wine and we were all, “OMG! I’m so full!!! I can’t eat another bite!!” until….

Holy shit! Amy brought a chocolate fondue with these crispy ginger things, coconut marshmallows, biscuits, apples, pears, bananas, pretzels…holy shit! I don’t even care for chocolate but I was guzzling it like I was Ernest Hemingway set loose in a Key West bar after a 2 day dry spell.

It was a great night and as always, it left me anxious for the next food blogger get together (rumored to be some time in early May). While we couldn’t quite reenact the 70s (no spouses/significant others, so no key parties), it was an awesome event! And here is a picture that I know has the peppers on top of my pizza fondue masterpiece:

There it go!