Weekend O' Food

The gang spent the weekend at Spyrogyra's beach house and the theme was endless amounts of food. This was the kind of weekend I love. The location of the beach house, in Rehoboth meant that there were many options - beaching, shopping, boardwalking - and the size of the group (10 people in all) meant that other than hanging out at the house, noone was obligated to do anything they didn't want to do. Case in point - the afternoon saw Pauline sleeping off lunch in a hammock, Slim and Connecticut Bob at Delaware Pride, Slyin' watching football, and me, J, Rootbeer and Spyrogyra at the boardwalk where we were joined by Golden Sister and Lawn.

Anyway, we arrived at beach house Friday night where I noticed a tasteful fall arrangement on the table and something sparkly on Rootbeer's finger. Not knowing what was appropriate, I held my tongue. Luckily, the happy couple spilled the news that Spyrogyra proposed the previous night, complete with champagne and chocolate dipped strawberries. We were all overjoyed but the rightness of this coupling made the actual engagement seem predestined and therefore not a complete surprise. Fortunately, Golden Sister more than made up for my deficit of surprise. We're happy to welcome Spyrogyra into our crazy family of choice and told the happy couple the SNDP wedding machine could be put into motion. This made a cavalcade of wedding discussions because Lyin' and Lawn are due to be married this Saturday.

The cavalcade of food started with doughnuts from the Fractured Prune - AlL 36 of THEM! that's a lot of fried dough. That allowed for a lot of variety. The winners included the mocha doughnut, and the French toast doughnut. The loser was the mint doughnut that was an unnatural green. Between the banana, three doughnuts, two English muffins and a half a bagel, I was going into a carb coma. To keep myself awake, I went to the world's most comfortable adirondack chair and quilted. J and I went for a walk and gathered seashells. For those of you who haven't been to our place, we have bowls of seashells on our shelves. Half the group went to Crabby Dick's for lunch and the rest of us went for provisions for dinner.

When we all reconvened, Spyrogyra and I got going on our antipasto dinner. I love having antipasto and tapas potlucks because those little bites are crazy expensive in restaurants and fairly expensive if you wanted to put it together yourself but very cheap if done potluck style. Laid out at the table were an olive bread and a roasted garlic bread along with an assortment of salami, proscuitto, olives, fresh mozarella, roasted peppers, peppadews, and spicy fontina cheese. J and I were fry daddies last night, making risotto balls and crab balls and a dill dipping sauce. Spyrogyra made some tasty pasta with broccoli, shrimp, and olive oil. And I did make a balsamic reduction because almost everything tastes better with a balsamic reduction. Perfect for drizzling on a crostini of olive bread, proscuitto and mozarella. We barely had any room for the carrot cake and the chocolate pie.

The next morning Slim and Connecticut Bob made breakfast for everyone consisting of eggs benedict, roasted potatoes, and a incredible fruit salad of grapefruit, oranges, strawberries, and blueberries. Not a melon in sight! I did have to assert myself when I found out they were gonna make the Hollandaise sauce from a mix and I huffed, "I'll make the damn sauce before I let it come from a mix." That was seriously rude on my part and I apologize to Slim for the outburst and said that Hollandaise from a mix would be fine. Slim was gracious to accept my apology and said it would be fine if I made my own. In the end we did both. The Hollandaise from a mix was a touch too reunny whereas mine was way too garlicky. Lawn mixed them together for a perfect Hollandaise.

Thank god I played some tennis that weekend otherwise I'd still be in a food coma.

Recipes are on their way.