Then Pat and Barb arrived on Saturday and the weekend was off! This was a weekend that we have been looking forward to for months...years, really. These friends have hosted us so often and so generously, it was our fondest wish that we would get the opportunity to return the hospitality sometime, in a home of our own and this weekend was the fulfillment of that wish. We had been expecting John and Betsey on Saturday as well, but it turned out to have been their son's junior prom, and, well, you can't miss that! So we fired up the grill and had beautiful brats, locally made, with some of Grandma Arenberg's (my Grandma Arenberg, not Emma's) German potato salad and my homemade kimchee. Al and Sue and Clinton arrived later that night, and John and Betsey got in late Sunday morning. Patty and Mark arrived Sunday afternoon and the party was on. [In the picture, l to r: Emma, Clinton, Sue, Mark, Patty.]
Bill made the winning dish of the weekend, for Sunday morning breakfast: a Torta Milanese,
from Baking with Julia. It was, to say the least, sublime, perfection. Layers of herb scrambled eggs, swiss cheese, creamed spinach and roasted red peppers and ham and, as they say...repeat. And if that weren't enough, wrap it all in a buttery puff pastry. A keeper.
Dinner was grilled pork country ribs with a ras el hanout and brown sugar rub and my old stand-by of the butterflied leg of lamb, marinated in lemon juice, olive oil, sliced onions, garlic and rosemary, charred under a flame for fifteen or twenty minutes (really...that's all it needs), and the other picnic stand-by, M.F.K. Fisher's Salade Camarguease, a rice salad that really is a meal in and of itself, and a fine one at that.
Barb brought beautiful baked beans and coleslaw (to say nothing of the pickled whelks we ate earlier). Betsey's apple cake and a cherry bread from Barb accompanied the red velvet cake, topped with three kinds of Battenkill Dairy ice cream (strawberry, blackberry and chocolate chunk) all sweetened by a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday." And, I must say, it felt like the perfect way to turn 60.
Bocce was played. Gardens were tended to, mulched, weeded and manured. Music was played, and bonfires were lit. The weather remained sheer perfection the entire weekend, a boon to those of us who had pitched tents around the property.The only thing that could have made it any better would have been had we been able to use the beehive oven. But we are still in need of a door for that. Next time.
A fine time was had by all. As fine as emeralds...or watermelon pickles!
