Menus and grocery lists, November 20, 2013

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lacked anything.

George Herbert

It was a great good fortune to come of party-hosting age when and where I did. I was in my twenties, and Martha Stewart was a model turned caterer who had published little book that was as visible to me as the ghost writer who penned it :

Yep, that long ago.

This cultural icon-to-be had just landed on the bookstore shelves when we loaded up the kids and moved to a beautiful land where the perfect hostess was any woman who could open the front door and smile at the same time:

And yes, once or twice we did invite
a kangaroo over for dinner.
They are very tasty. 

When, after a few formative years we returned to the Great State of Texas, the first stanza of George Herbert's lovely poem on love was painted (by yours truly, determined to never outgrow the scribbling on stuff phase)  in blue script at the entrance of our kitchen.

 And so it was that as I passed a hundred times a day by these words of grace and welcome, George Herbert (who hadn't partied since 1633) was silently mentoring me in the art hospitality, even though these:

were the only chargers I'd ever heard of.

Through various embarrassments, I have since learned that a charger is the big plate on the bottom that does what a placemat used to do and that you are not supposed to put food on, that it's a good idea to disable  smoke detectors before cooking a big meal (hey wait. Did I able those back on after last Thanksgiving?)  and like this clever hostess,

I've learned that if things start going awkward,
it's best to paste on a smile, and offer a colorful beverage.

Thanksgiving arrives on a silver platter in 9 short days. That's 216 hours, for those of you who have learned how to live without sleep. 

Since these sorts of occasions ladle a full helping of insecurity gravy right on top of my personal mash of excitement and enthusiasm, I decided (in a moment of crazy) to ask the internet how to be a perfect Thanksgiving hostess. News flash: this did not help. Corollary news flash: the modern American perfect hostess turns out to be someone I think I cannot be, and maybe don't even want to be around.

So, if the person the modern world calls a perfect hostess is a woman not many of us could happily feast with, what's a bad hostess? I asked the internet that too, and found out that a whole lot of people

Are really mad at Hostess
 for trashing their favorite snack food.

 In the end, George Herbert's four hundred year old lesson in hospitality came again to the rescue.

G.H.: "Take THAT, you meaningless measures of  societal perfection!
Me:"Oh George! My Hero! Come inside, you look like you could use a cookie."

The bottom line (after perusing a webful of horrible/hilarious  bad host/bad guest stories) seems to be this: a good hostess cares about whether or not her guests feel cared for, while the maybe not-so-good hostess gets crabby if she feels like her guests aren't taking good enough care of her.

Which means, I suppose, that in the busy 200 or so hours before a big day, it's a worthy goal for the host (and guest, I guess) to try to sleep well, work well and dine well, crushing some of those crabby feelings before they hatch.  And dining well in a busy week means finding food that is quick and easy to make and nourishing and comforting to eat. 

Maybe like this:

Wednesday:  Bacon and egg potatoes with spinach

There are a few pounds of potatoes in the pantry that would love their turn at the dinner table, so I asked the internet to tell me how to turn them into more than a side dish. I've linked you to the best result, a list of 10 fun potatoes-for-dinner ideas. This one sounded easy and yummy. I'll saute a bag of spinach for a quick vegetable side, and cooking one or two extra potatoes to speed up tomorrow's salmon. Save yourself some time by frying up a little zip bag of bacon for Friday night. 

Thursday: Salmon, potatoes and green beans en papillote

Hard to pronounce, easy to make and fun to eat. The portions of salmon available (by which I mean affordable) at our local grocery are pretty small. So small that they would overcook before the potatoes in this recipe were done. Solution? Cubes or slices of last night's baked potatoes. Asparagus is nearly as expensive per pound this month as salmon, so I'll be using green beans instead. Here's a thing to love about cooking in parchment- you can put these little parcels together in whatever random 20 minutes you can carve out during the day, and they'll be ready and waiting to be thrown in the oven about 20 minutes before dinner time. And at dinner time? They make dinner feel like opening a present.

Friday: Cheddar cheese soup with bacon and tomatoes

Another quick and easy dinner for a cool Autumn night- I wondered and wondered what nice veg would be nice with this soup, and then noticed the tomato and bacon in the picture. Hey presto, soup with tomatoes and bacon on the side. Any last bits of leftover potato can jump in to the soup bowl too.

Saturday: Chicken with sweet potatoes and greens

Two nutritional superfoods on one plate, and for protein a (gasp) store bought rotisserie chicken. I realize that there are some people out there who hold a strong antipathy toward rotisserie chicken, and it has not escaped my notice that these people are rarely the ones responsible for preparing an alternative. Those of us who hope to bake a batch of cookies, make some candle holders, find the candles, buy some candles when we can't find the candles, hang a garland or two and tidy the house this afternoon love these store-roasted birds nearly as much as home delivery pizza.

Sunday: Chicken and Dumplings

ok. See all that complicated chicken and vegetable prep in this recipe? If you have the time and wish to do that, it looks mighty delicious, so go ahead. But I'll be using the leftover rotisserie chicken and a bag of frozen soup vegetables. So why, you may well ask, have I linked to a recipe that I don't plan on using? Because of the dumplings. Just look at that dumpling recipe! It looks perfect! Besides, I always forget whether to leave the dumplings covered or uncovered while they cook, and this recipe spells that out clearly.

and in the next week or so, as you prepare to guest, or host, or both,

 I think it's important for you to know

That picture perfect only exists inside a camera

and is gone before the shutter closes.

That the way you love the world around you

is the end and the beginning of the feast.

And it's important for you to know

that somehow-

not in spite of,

not because of,

but right in the middle of

all your beautiful imperfections,

you are welcomed.
and you are not alone.