Tasty Food to Celebrate American Freedom in the South of France
The Agony
This year Leslie invited 50 people using the French e-vite system. No one responded, probably because few use this feature and our invited guests don’t quite know how to reply. That generally means that the normal anxiety of all good hosts — certain both that no one is coming and that there won’t be enough food — compounds.
Since Sheral, Richard, and I were tasked with preparing the food and since we each have our own way of doing things, it was a slightly chaotic scene. The day before, we divided duties over a lunch that included local sausages, cheeses, bread, and salads.
Sheral picked out roasted, peeled beets at the local supermarket and sliced them, topping them with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, thyme, and crumbled soft goat cheese. That salad reminded me so much of my grandmother’s summertime beet borscht with sour cream.
The plan: Richard would make the rice salad, cook the meat, get more butane for the grill, and pick up the odds and ends like the hamburger and hot dog buns that the baker, Mr. Honorat, made for the event.
“Dum Vivimus Vivamus,” Clarice. “While we live, let us live/.”
May I suggest sending your host a set of Pyrex measuring cups for liquids and metal cups and spoons for dry ingredients. It eliminates having to do conversions. Also, you can get small scales that will measure ingredients in both ounces and grams. They aren’t too expensive. Also, you can get some American ingredients via Amazon.de. I don’t know about the French Amazon. My only American imports are brown sugar, unsweeetened chocolate, double-acting baking powder, Old Bay, and canned pumpkin for the pies I make for my Thanksgiving turkey dinner.
Thanks, vb. He has the scales and measuring cups. My problem was a pure math error as I calculated how to make 1 1/2 times the original recipe.
At the end of the trip I got to visit a warehouse/wholesale operation on the outskirts of Avignon which provides for restaurants. To my surprise I found not only a sort of chocolate chip but as well wild rice and dried cranberries (which we used to have to bring there). Still no pecans though which grow only in the U.S. and which make lovely gifts. I also saw bagels and tortillas and lots of halal meat.
Total non-sequitur here but had to tell you, Clarice, that I am making your aubergine recipe this afternoon for the first time and the smell is driving me wild. So far just the tomato “mulch” is done, and the eggplant slices are baking in the oven (my solution to endlessly re-plenishing the olive oil when frying them, as well as a small nod to moderation). Wish it weren’t so long until dinner!
….the eggplant slices are, of course, basted liberally in olive oil before being baked.
I hope you like it! I often do the same thing to avoid sing so much olive oil.
*Using so much oil*
What, no Budweiser or Miller Lite? Otherwise this looks really nice. And to be in Provence makes it all the more lovely.
So hamburgers, hotdogs, potato salad and cookies are some sort of major accomplishment? Ridiculous on so many levels.
What’s ridiculous is that you assume that it’s easy to work from a kitchen the size of broom closet. Making hamburgers, hotdogs, potato salad and cookies is a major accomplishment for 47 guests. Also, it’s not as if the hosts could run down to the local Pigley-Wigley and pick-up hamburger buns.