Text 4310, 77 rader
Skriven 2006-08-14 14:34:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: picnic day 66
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I got up too late for breakfast (pork porkolt) - didn't
go downstairs until I heard substantial activity. The
parade of folks started around 9 or 9:30.

My Gourmet brand tuna products were the first appetizer
of the day: Ruth picked them up atthe Ocean State Job Lots:

A medium-spicy tuna spread was tuna salad with some red oil
floating on it - a modest spiciness, otherwise what you might
get at a sandwich shop or make yourself;

green curry tuna - a simple taste of tuna and raw green curry
paste, decent and fairly spicy but not very exciting. The most
notable thing was that there were a few pea eggplant and either
lime leaves or curry leaves in the mix.

I preferred the green stuff; others liked red better.

Ruth also brought pork meat balls, which were mostly the usual
thing (and very popular as such) but kicked up with what I first
guessed as dried shrimp powder but was revealed to be fish sauce.

Unfortunately these were served with Madame Shel-Lee's Chinese
mustard from Williams-Sonoma, a brown-colored, brown-tasting
somewhat metallic sludge that everyone pronounced nasty;
fortunately nobody was under the obligation to use it, and it
shortly went into the bin unmourned.

She also picked up a pickled beef tongue on Manny's behalf - we
had gone to Rein's to see if they had one, but they didn't, so
the SOS came out, and Ruth came through after a field trip to
a Kosher deli in the Hartford area. It was in fact a taste that
most of us hadn't tasted in many years and was perhaps worth the
considerable cost - quite a bit higher than the boiled or smoked
ones that are more easily available - for that. To go with the
tongue, Manny made a very creamy cole slaw with lots of Hellmann's
- when he finally did show up, having overslept by virtue of still
being on west coast time.

Joan made a rather spicy gazpacho that I downed a big cup of,
encouraged to ignore the dice of cucumber by the ample dose of
Sriracha. She also came with some native tomatoes, which I didn't
get to try.

Of course, the main event was ribs: I am happy to report that
even though Dave's grill was out of commish, the smoker still
worked, and the ribs that came out were smoky and mostly very
tender.

Ruth also had makings for sauerbraten, but there was too much
food on the table already, as usual.

The Fords provided soft drinks and a few bottles of wine, of
which I tasted but one.

Nice desserts. Ruth had made Lebkuchen, German-style spice
bars; hers were nicely spiced quite firm cookies almost the
texture of Pfeffernuesse. In the past I've had a more cake-like
version, but these were good enough for me to munch on three on
top of two helpings of the Shipps' pecan-peach bread pudding,
which came with a peach schnapps sauce (I actually preferred it
without, as it was nicely mildly sweet before saucing and quite
sweet after). There was also Lactaid double chocolate chip ice
cream, which I had been warned was unsufficiently lactose-free
but was decent-tasting not-too-creamy ice cream with an adequate
cocoa flavor.

I missed a few tastes and a bunch of the conversation owing to
needing to take frequent naps, and I think this was the first
picnic that I didn't prepare any of the food - just chopped up a
few things for other people.

At 10 Joel and Ellen came to pick me up for the 2-hour ride
back to the Boston area, so appropriate good-byes were made
and off I went.
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