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.

The demo person at the BJ's I got them from not only claimed the maple
as the best of the three, she also confessed to claiming most from the
bags she was demo-ing for herself, couldn't stop eating them... ;) At

I see diabetes in her future. But of course pretty much
everyone is prediabetic these days. Did I write about my
little glucometer experiment that showed me that diet soda in
fact did raise my blood sugar but not as much as sugared soda?

the end of the picnic, Ruth took all leftover maple ones, and Mark went
home with the rest of the bag... :)

I didn't keep track. For me, unless stuff is close to weightless
and pretty much volumeless, I don't want to be saddled with it.
And at most airports now, they make you take food, books, and
magazines out of your carryon - apparently the terrorists have
gotten clever and fashioned weapons that look like these items.

Saturday I had mostly stayed out of the kitchen or supervised
or shirked my duties or whatever you choose to call it.

You'd spent a good part of the time doing the honors with the steak and kidney pie, don't forget... :) Besides, I don't think you missed any of

Oh, yeah. I read snake and kidney pie, a menu item for a
future picnic. As one girl said when I asked her out, "in
your dreams."

the Sunday tastes... I didn't note anything that you didn't mention...
well, maybe the dried pineapple was on Sunday.... and the citrus olives

I'm not sure dried pineapple would have been in my radar
unless it were homegrown or homemade.

with the bit of preserved lemon in it...?

I heard people chattering about that.

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.

I was just as glad it wasn't as sweet as many Greek desserts tend to
be... and it was quite nice... :)

The filling was cooked more than I'd wanted, because it took too
long for the pastry to brown up; otherwise it was pretty good.

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?

Perhaps not all of them.... besides, I think he's half something else,
maybe German...?

Yeah, German.

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.

Pretty sure it was organic, and eco-enterprise is probably also
accurate... grown, processed and bottled by his niece and her husband...

It was oilier than more recent olive oils I've had, more like
what one used to get, not that that's a bad thing - fancy oils
have gotten just too recherche and delicate.

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.

The skordalia was indeed quite tasty on its own, though... :) And made
a very nice dipping sauce for the battered veggies... :)

They were designed for each other. My ideal was a more
fluffy and less gooey sauce; I succeeded at Burt's many
years back but made the vegetable batter too delicate to
get the pieces sturdy enough to be good dippers.

Mark had brought a pot of his famous beans.

...

They were indeed very tasty... and I don't even care all that much for
beans usually... :) Must have been that ham hock meat, fat and skin
that did it... :)

Bacon, yea verily, pork of all sorts, makes everything
better.

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.

I liked them well enough, as I remember... :)

I heard lots of this wow, that's too sweet stuff.


MMMMM----- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.02

Title: Pina Colada Bread ABM
Categories: Breads, Desserts, Kooknet, Cyberealm
Yield: 8 servings

1 Egg
1 ts Coconut Extract
1/4 Unsalted Butter; softened
3/4 c Coconut Milk; plus
2 tb Coconut Milk; (if needed)
3 tb Sugar
1 ts Salt
1/4 ts Ascorbic Acid
2 1/2 c Bread Flour
1 tb Yeast
1 c Unsweetened Flaked Coconut
1/2 c Dried Pineapple; chopped

Place all ingredients except coconut and pineapple in the machine.
Program for sweet or raisin bread. Add the coconut and pineapple when
the Hitachi timer reads 3:44.

Source: Desserts from Your Bread Machine Typed by Meg Antczak, Fido
Cooking Conference, 07-19-95 Revised for Meal-Master Format by
Katherine Smith

MMMMM
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* Origin: Fido Since 1991 | QWK by Web | BBS.FIDOSYSOP.ORG (1:123/140)