Sunday we arrived from the house right on time just as the truck
pulled in back from church.

The first order of the day was to be brave and try the third
new Snickers flavor - it had a distinct mapleish flavor whose
intensity made it seem artificial (I believe that the claim
is made that all the flavors are natural). As with its
siblings, it was on the smooth side and cloyingly sweet.

Someone else will have to report on most of the tastes of the
day, as it was my turn to cook - on official picnic day
Saturday I had mostly stayed out of the kitchen or supervised
or shirked my duties or whatever you choose to call it.

I took the Apollo brand phyllo and went to work on it. Boy,
it drinks a lot of butter. Seven layers of butter-brushed
dough on the bottom of an 8x8, the chilled filling poured
over, seven more layers of dough, four butter-brushed, but
I didn't want to open another stick of butter, so the last
few were sprayed with Pam. Into the oven until the pastry
was brown. Meanwhile, I boiled a syrup of approximately 1/3
each of water, sugar (raw), and honey, Ceylon cinnamon for
flavoring, this to pour on top. Traditionally it's poured on
to soak into the dessert, but I used less sugar and caused
less sugar to be ingested, given our age and health issues.
When this got eaten, people seemed to like it okay (it was
indeed not too sweet), and Ruth allowed that maybe cream of
wheat wasn't that horrible after all.

My main project was skordalia to be served with fried
eggplant and zucchini, in order to demonstrate that I could
be induced to eat potatoes and zucchini and that Steve
could be induced to eat eggplant. Funny, he's Italian, don't
Italians love eggplant?

The Ninja food processor, of which I've spoken, was the main
tool: it has twice as many blades than your standard but
whirls at a slower speed. This is mostly fine, but after the
experience I'd have done things a little differently. The
plan: do a mess of raw garlic, add salt, vinegar, and olive
oil, and combine with mashed potatoes. Everything went okay
tastewise, but the texture was a little suboptimal. I admit
to having bought a suboptimal variety of potato, because I
couldn't find anything appropriate from the Publix, so the
final texture was more like a bread skordalia than a potato
one. Also, I might have ought to have fixed the garlic in the
classic Greek housewife's handmade way first but was too lazy.

The oil was from Knidia, an organic I think eco-enterprise
run by Nancy's son's lady's family. It was delicate in flavor
with a moderate oiliness and went well.

I cut up the zucchini and eggplant into finger food, salting
and squeezing the latter in the standard way to get rid of the
brown tannic bitterness. Then egg wash and cornstarch and into
the Presto fryer, of which I had the same trouble as I'd had
with Annie's years ago - not only does it not heat as hot as
it claims to, the little compartment allows the temperature to
sag at times. So the vegetables took longer to cook, and the
batter didn't brown as much as it might have. Nonetheless, what
came out was tender food in a sturdy crunchy batter ideal for
dipping into the skordalia, which made things, even zucchini,
taste okay. To my dismay, though, Steve abandoned the eggplant
and started eating the potatoes by themselves.

Lest we starve, out of the evergiving fridge came leftover brisket,
pulled pork, and souse and sandwich fixings and accompaniments. I
had mostly souse with a bit of fatty pastrami, which seemed
somehow saltier than before. Subsequent note - others report that
the second piece was indeed saltier.

Mark had brought a pot of his famous beans. These were as I
understand a fairly festive batch, containing lots of ham hock
meat, fat, and skin. Otherwise they were your good old stick-
to-your-ribs southern fare. They would have gone well with
biscuits, but I'm not a starchy person so can't report. I did
eat almost enough of the beans to cause distress to the people
in the neighborhood, though.

He also sacrificed a jar of Sechler's sweet orange strip pickles
from his pantry. These were exceedingly sweet and just a tad
orangey, as much a dessert as a pickle. I liked these better
than most of us did.
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