Our Spring Lunch

[racheld]

Yesterday was FINALLY our “Easter” lunch---we’ve either been gone or otherwise occupied for several years now, and I’ve missed the Spring things, the bringing out of the pastels, the crocheted bunnies, the ceramic egg cups which hold an egg color- dipped by small hands. We postponed our gathering a week this year to allow for DS and DDIL’s lunch with her parents and grandmother last week, and to await the arrival of our DS#4 who is studying to be a minister at a seminary in California. He’ll graduate in May, and will be posted to China soon, so we’re making the most of our time together now.

We were six at table, after a whirlwind week of road trips, faraway service calls, traveling for fun and for work, stopping off at a great catfish place one night for a taste of the Southern experience, to Red Lobster another, and a lunch at Chick-fil-a. John has missed the C-f-a most of any restaurant, I think—they seem to be non-existent in California, and said he’s getting one last one at the airport, to hold him til his next visit.

DS#2 joined us four for a big hearty Southern breakfast on Saturday, one that my Mom served many times over the years---leftover pot roast in gravy, served over big fluffy cathead biscuits, with a side of two eggs apiece for the guys, with peach preserves. sorghum syrup, and sticks of crumbly rich hoop cheese. I sat in the floor, feeding our littlest one baby cereal and bananas, while Chris peeled me a big cold navel orange.

Then Saturday night, we all met at a Ryan’s in a nearby town for a quick buffet dinner, as we had tickets to a “Swing” evening at the symphony. They even treated the audience to champagne at intermission, to toast the organization’s 40th year.

Sunday morning, we all had an early quick pastry brought by Caro from work, and got all the Sunday dinner prep done before church at 10:30.

We came home, baked the cheese biscuits:

And the mac and cheese---not quite dive-worthy, but at least good for a soft nestle:

There were sweet potatoes, baked the day before to a soft, sweet slump, then sliced cold into a buttered dish, more soft butter dotted atop, a scatter of Turbinado sugar, and baked until the plump pastel bunnies melted into a fluffy rainbow:

There were six of us at table, with a tiny high chair involved---my favorite kind of gathering. The flowery boxes hold pages and reams of this year's midnight scribblings---Chris gives me a new box now and then, probably so we won't all perish in an avalanche of sliding paper and cardboard boxes.

And I just love any excuse to get out all the pretty damask napkins. Clear place plate, with a clear pink salad plate atop.

We took things out of the oven, plated the salad and sat down:

It was baby butter lettuce, romaine hearts, fresh pear slices and pine nuts in a lime vinaigrette, with buttery bagette croutons.

A slight intermission for the salad course, as I've lost whole posts into the ether before, and don't want to go too far, in case all this disappears.

[Rebecca263]

Lime vinaigrette sounds GOOD, but you know me, I'm partial to BISCUITS.

[racheld]

Chris had put the ham on the grill about 7 a.m. and took it off when we got home from church. He sliced it into thick, juicy pink slices:

There were stir-fried green beans, DDIL’s favorite thing, with a soy/sesame/garlic sauce, quick-cooked down to a rich brown syrup.

That poor old battered skillet has seen better days, but it has turned out a ton of fried chicken, mapo tofu, stove-top potroast, pork chops in “red” gravy, and lots of other good stuff over the years. Its Teflon is kinda chippy, but it’s still a good old workhorse---heavy, flat-bottomed and true, and just the right size for a BIG dish of something.

The little almost-white potatoes were just the potato-est potatoes---just the essence of a good spud, right from the ground, the thinthin skin scrubbed pale, and so creamy-smooth to the bite, with a little shine of butter and hint of scallion to set them off.

Bright green steamed sprouts, with a wisp of lemon in the butter. Their brightness belies the tenderness of each mouthful:

A dish of beet pickles, an old family tradition at all holiday meals, and always at Eastertime, a few boiled eggs in to grow burgundy and sweet with the brine. They were in the fridge in a little glad-box, and the dye made its own little roundy-eye patterns. First time I ever saw a chandelier reflected in an egg.

There was a bright bowl of crispy/tender shredded carrot salad, cool and sweet with minced pineapple, sultanas and dried cherries plumped overnight in the dressing.

In honor of my parents’ bountiful table where we gathered for so many years, DS#2 brought a dish of creamed corn, part of several hundred ears cut and frozen last July.

And of course, devilled eggs, tangy with mustard, several grinds of the peppermill, and a scatter of paprika, just like old times. The two-day “cheater” pickles have been mentioned lots of times before---they’re very sweet and crisp, and take just minutes to make.

The buffet just before the hordes descended. Um, I mean, before our beautifully-mannered family lined up in a polite, orderly fashion to partake daintily from the array:

We waited LONG after lunch to serve dessert and coffee. We all opened our Easter sacks, then set out the vanilla pound cake, strawberries, tiny cakestand of several flavors of cheesecake squares, and the warm pear crisp baked by DDIL.

It was a wonderful day all together, and we wound down into the twilight. Chris sat at the table and shaved thin slices from the ham while I finished the last dishwasher load, then he cut the rest into neat meal-sized chunks, which we bagged for the freezer. He left a good pot-of-greens'-worth of meat on the bone, and it will re-appear soon as the seasoning for a last-cold-night's dinner with a good black skillet of crusty cornbread.

At supper, the thin ham we had as sandwiches on the softest, freshest sub buns, with leftover devilled eggs and warmed potatoes. It was a lingery supper, almost til bedtime, as we tried to get several months’ conversation into that one last evening, to last us for a while.

All the leftovers are neatly snugged into the fridge, the stacks of dishes returned to their cabinets, the table moved back nearer the buffet, and our traveler well on his way, flying home into the West. It was exactly the occasion I’d been longing for.

[racheld]

Rebecca, if you were here, I'd bake a whole black skillet for you, every morning.

[Rehovot]

"nestle" is an excellent word to pair with macaroni and cheese.

What a great spring lunch that is!

[racheld]

Thank you from so far away---I'm off now to feed our girl a little rice cereal mixed with squash. Yum in the most enticing sense.

[hummingbirdkiss]

how absolutely beautiful thank you for sharing that feast!

[Kim Shook]

Lovely, my friend! I was just in the midst of an email to you and decided to check w/ eG and found this wonderful celebration. Thank you for inviting us, Rachel. You are a more hospitable virtual hostess than some actual hostesses manage!

More anon!

[heidih]

Thank you so much Rachel for allowing us a window into your lovely gathering. My family just can't do these lingering talkative times at the table. I am however blessed with girlfriends that lunch and linger and I treasure them.

[racheld]

Thank you to both of you lovely people! I wish you could have been here---it was a lively good time, I can tell you. We had music and baby-dancing and presents (mine from Chris was a nice new stroller and car seat (pink of course) for all our park outings soon as this cloudy weather clears up).

The talk got right rowdy at the table---when two of the children are here, it's pretty manageable---let a third or more get into the mix, and things get out of hand.

I forgot to say about the devilled eggs: I always just plop the stuffing off of one spoon with another. I turned around, and Caro was daintily scraping spoon on spoon, making the neatest little quenelles. She said, "Well, I STARTED to cut off a bag tip like Sandra Lee."

[racheld]

Heidi, I didn't see you there when I replied---I wish the lingering were a greater part of a lot of our interactions and friendships and family times. It's the times of staying that seem to be most enjoyable.

I've always thought the best part of a party was the feet-up time after most of the crowd has left, and you're lingering over coffee or liqueurs and slow, lazy conversation with the people you most wanted to stay. That's the most relaxing after all the preparation and the trying to keep everything moving smoothly with introductions and re-fillings and clearing.

It's nice to just BE for a while in the midst of your entertaining. Taking off your shoes and sitting feet-tucked on the sofa as the candles burn low, or leaning slumped against a warm body as you laugh and talk is fulfilling in a way that I think the gathering close around a hearth is, like a tumble of warm puppies or the easy closeness of children.

More talk, more wine, another fire log or fresh CD playing softly. And nibbling on leftovers is a bonus, as well---no chocolate cake should ever go to waste.

[Domestic Goddess]

Beautiful as always, rachel. Just beautiful. Thank you for sharing and please send the leftovers to me. :biggin:

[Cadbury]

Lovely.

[Lilija]

This is wonderful! Family dinner type posts rank up as my favorite kind, here at eG, doubly so when they're rachel's.

Thank you for sharing, we need more like this!

[naguere]

Lovely.

Easter Joy Be Thine.

[Kim Shook]

Ok - beautiful biscuits, of course. I would expect no less ! But that lovely, pillowy mac n cheese!! So good. I would like some of that right now instead of the deli sandwiches that were just delivered! The little Wicked Witch of the West melting bunnies made me laugh. We do a marshmallow topped bourbon/sweet potato casserole at Christmas and have the same melty little green trees and red bells (?), but I like the pastels better! Your table is beautiful and I love all your glassware - I have the same deviled egg plate!

Thank you, again! Yours is the house that I want to spend Sunday afternoons at! Or the one I am trying to emulate on those Sundays!

[Mysstwalker]

Rachel, have your son in California check the Chick Fil A website, we have them out here in Cali too! I have two of them about 20 minutes away, thats what we had for a quick convenient dinner last week. I had missed it so badly after I left Texas and was overjoyed that they were coming here!

[racheld]

I FOUND one---36 miles away---they seem to be, as the Southern expression goes, "kinda thin on the ground."

Thanks for the tip---perhaps some weekend when the craving gets great, he'll just head out for an afternoon drive through that beautiful countryside.

And thank you, Doddie, lilija, Cadbury, naguere for the kind words. I long for Spring every year (though I LOVE Winter) just because of the stir of the getting outside into the garden and getting the radishes and little spiky onions and all the good things planted for leisurely, shady dinners on the patio.

This Easter meal was a bit on the heavy side, with no asparagus as usual, but I made John's favorite things since we see him so seldom. (The carrot salad was mainly for me).

Kim---always lovely to hear from you.

Edited April 1, 2008 by racheld (log)

[racheld]

Using up Sunday's ham:

I'm cooking a good ole Southern Summertime supper right now, in spite of the very damp cold still hovering over all our days. A pot of fieldpeas and snaps, with a big hunk of ham simmered fall-apart tender, a dish of "stewed" potatoes (baby reds, chunked and gently boiled til tender, the cooking water then thickened with a flour and water slurry, a hunk of butter, and lots of fresh-ground pepper. One little can of beet slices, the juices sweet/sour and made into a version of "Harvard" beets, with the juices thickened with cornstarch, and a little bit of fried cornbread, about a quarter of a recipe, sizzled at the last minute in a non-stick pan with butter.

If MY tulips are coming up, way up here in Indiana, then it MUST be SPRING somewhere!!! It seems like YEARS since I was outdoors planting things.

I can't wait to plant carrots and peas and beans, with a row of cabbages like big green roses---we'll water and watch them grow, and then we'll harvest them and cook them all up into lots of lovely dishes: steamed carrots and carrot salad---long, thin threads from the grater, to be mixed with some plumped Sultanas, some tiny sweet chunks of fresh pineapple, with a sour cream/mayo dressing, slightly sweet, with a bit of sugar and lemon juice, much like the from-the-store ones at dinner on Sunday.

And creamed carrots, if anyone likes those---My Mother's creamed carrots used to consist of big ole slices from nearly-too-big carrots, the getting-almost-woody ones which had been missed beneath the earth, and had grown into roots the size of salamis. Those chariot-wheels, boiled within an inch of their lives, drained, then drenched in big glugs of the same Pet milk my parents used for coffee creamer---a thorough blackening with sifts from the Watkins Black Pepper can, and there you were: the worst of any two worlds. And served on Sunday, to boot.

Peas, we never creamed, though I'd seen them in cookbooks, sometimes with little shiny onions almost their size. Somehow those Southern cooks, so attuned to the greige flavors of opening a can of School Day English Peas, with their tinny mushy if-they-didn't-still-have-tough-little-carapaces-you'd think-they-were already soup consistency---those cooks knew the secret of the special ones. Those first peas from the garden---not the big peapatch of purplehulls or Crowders or Silverskins or pinkeyes---not those slice-of-salt-meat everyday peas, so good with a hunk of cornbread and a big slice of cold sweet onion---not those.

No. The small green peas in the special bed with the posts and strings to climb, waving their little flowery tentacles skyward, were good for perhaps three pickings before the vines gave up the ghost in that post-April heat of those gumbo gardens---those were the jewels of the Summer crop. Small and twinkly from the pods, crisp and flavored with all the green of a thousand Summers---somehow those good hearty cooks knew, with the instinct of holding a baby, the right way to treat those peas.

A scant half-inch of water into a shallow pan---small sprinkle each of salt and sugar, a quick boil, then in with the handfuls of just-shelled peas. Lid on, fire off; quick shake. Less than five minutes to sit; shake, then a drain with the lid held tightly on, just to the side. Big knob of butter in, melt a minute, another shake for a gleaming coat, and to the table---less than ten minutes from pod to plate.

That's one of the things M.F.K. Fisher waxes so eloquently of---the pans of Summer peas, which I remember she served with a cool salad and some small roasted chickens delivered by a neighbor whilst the household was picking and shelling the peas. A sultrily-steaming Deep South kitchen and a a hillside in France---now THERE are two worlds that get together in the BEST way.

But for a few more days, plans, wishes and a stack of catalogs will have to do til I can get a spade into the ground. And this nice robin helps, calling me out into the chilly sunshine.

[AnnaC]

I usually lurk and rarely post, but...

this Southern girl wishes that you were my MIL, Rachel!

[racheld]

Thank you, Anna!!! I try to be as good a MIL as the two I've been blessed with. The first was an absolute angel, and now, just the same.

(And two of our five sons are still unattached . . .) How close are you to Atlanta?

[Lilija]

Mm, poetry. Even the part about the carrots!

[onrushpam]

Ah Rachel... your talk of sweet green peas made me cry!

I remember so well, helping my Grandma shell "English" peas on the porch in the not-yet-hot sunshine. I'd eat more of the little peas raw than I put into the bowl for her to cook. At the time, I didn't understand why Grandma fussed at me! Now, I know... there were precious few of those little green jewels.

Saturday will be my first (maybe only) chance to get to the growers' market for some Spring goodness... tender lettuce, green garlic, baby new onions and MAYBE a little bag o' peas??? I fear it may be too late for the peas down here.

I thought of you last night when we went to our little local seafood joint. Aside the very good grilled grouper and fresh asparagus, I had creamy grits topped with a big mound of grated rat cheese!

Pam

[racheld]

AWWWW. Being thought of over rat cheese is just the loveliest thing!!!

The peas-on-the-porch thing was reminiscent of all our pea-shelling days. We lived in one of those bubbles called a "house" down in mosquito country, and so were rarely outside in the shade for very long at a time.

We did our picking at peril, swatting and sweating through the "OFF" slick on our arms and legs, and then carried the bushels and bushels of fieldpeas and purplehulls indoors for the shelling. Our little rat terrier, Petey, had to be locked down the hall, contributing to the conversation with loud, forlorn whines and whimpers, because he chased every errant pea that went bouncing over the floor, eating so many of the lively green things that he had, shall we say, "problems" of an unpleasant nature.

But when they were cooked, he always got a little serving in his dish. He loved his vegetables; he would kiss your feet for a piece of raw broccoli as you cooked. We'd find old dried-out wizened pieces all down in the cushions of "his" couch.

[Kouign Aman]

Rachel,

oh my.

Last week we had dinner that included pea tendrils - the wind-aroundy bits, and a few tender leaves, gently piled on the main course. They were delicious.

I havent eaten garden-fresh peas since I was 5, visiting England, and my 6-year old aunt took me thru her father's garden on a clandestine raid.

You do have a way with stirring up memories from the bottom of the pot.

If you are ever California-ward, perhaps you can come by for a meal, and the munchkin can learn about faeries from an expert.