American Food : It's NOT what you think.

     Today my church held an International Food Fete. Many different types of food were there: Chinese, Malaysian, Italian, Burmese, more Italian...and American. Yes, American.  O.K., I'll wait for you to stop laughing and cracking wise.  Finished?  Good.
     I get this reaction often.  Those golden arch folks are so good at branding and marketing that the world over believes hamburgers and super-sized fries are the entirety of the American diet.  So when the idea was broached to hold a food fete [ pronounced in 'Strine as 'food fight' ] at my church I quickly raised my hand to make my contribution. After the laughter over such an absurd notion subsided, I officially started my campaign to educate the public on the real classic American menu. I was going to offer up complete meals, iconic holiday meals, that they may have only heard about in movies but now would get to try them in real life.  
    The menu:
          Thanksgiving Dinner - roasted turkey with gravy, bread stuffing, yams (sweetened with real maple syrup), green beans almondine (skip the canned mushroom soup casserole) and cranberry sauce.
          St Patrick's Day - corned beef, cabbage, potato, onion and carrot. Green beer is on their own.
          Comfort Food - meatloaf , mashed potatoes, green beans and apple crisp.  The very stuff Mom makes to say she loves you.
          Snack Time  - homemade jam and bread slices.  Well, this is a bit of bragging over my illustrious, award-winning jam career (ahem) and a way to clear out my pantry while offering an inexpensive snack option.

    Despite only preparing 15 servings of each category, this proved to be a behemoth task beyond roasting a stuffed 10-pound bird. The menu planning and costings weren't difficult but Kev refused to even mash a few potatoes so I was a one person culinary machine. It took several days to get it all prepared, measured, properly and appealingly arranged in carryout containers and frozen.   Hey, what could be more American than a frozen dinner? People could take it home or microwave it in the hall right away...it was the protocol for all vendors.
    Every good teacher goes into class prepared. I had menu sheets describing the offerings and their significance. Large signs saying, "American Food.  It's NOT what you think." An American flag to drape in front of the table as a come-on and a handmade sign of two yellow arches inside a red NO circle. For added effect, I wore my Betty Crocker apron.  And, as a nod to our good neighbors to the north, I had some Canadian maple leaf cookies to give away. Open the doors and let the hordes in!
    Sigh. Apparently my large signs weren't large enough. Too many people glanced at the flag, muttered 'ha ha, American food' and moved on to the curried rice dishes three tables over. Get serious, people.  Curries and laksa  can be found on every street corner in Perth, this is unique.  Well, there was some interest in the Thanksgiving meal.  People who had been to the U.S. or worked with Americans/Canadians had heard about this incredible meal and were eager to try it.  I had a couple of amused Irishmen willing to try what counts as Irish food on the other side of the Atlantic and  the old church dears selected the cheaper snack option (with the brandied marmalade, thank you.)  I sold half of what I brought.  Re-educating the masses simply was not going to be a one shot success story.
     We all had the first timers learning curve and are reassessing our p's [publicity, pricing, placement, protocols] and our q's [give me a minute, I'll think of something here.]  Some of us vendors started to swap leftovers.  After donating the required 20% [people 'paid' us with coupons and vendors redeemed them at the end of the day from the church purse] I managed to just come out in the black. I'll call that a success.

     I'll call it convenient that I won't have to cook supper for the next two weeks.  It's all  in the freezer.

Thankful for the Harvest and Friends

    OK, the trick here is for a greenhorn to boast of botanical bonuses (and pretend to have a green thumb) while not sounding like one of her grandmother's garden reports. If I skip the rainfall stats (there wasn't much to speak of anyway), average temps (everyplace has temps), barometric readings (ummmmmmm), dew drop indexes (duhhhhhhh) and whatever else, I'll have....

Gardenia in the Herbarium

    THANKSGIVING!   The joy of serving up smidgens of one's own puny garden as part of the grand feast and calling oneself Pilgrim.  It took me entirely too long to figure out that if the winter's rains were not going to happen, I would have to water by hand. A neighbor's tomato plants are as tall as a man, my tomato plants are knee high.  But, the long dormant gardenia plant came to life. A gorgeous, fragrant bloom heralded the harvest to come.  The herbs growing in the  same location were ready to take their place on my table.  The beets went through waves of new greenery which, happily proved par for course for that vegetable. In fact, although not a traditional Thanksgiving dish, Yale Beets was served up as part of my harvest.

   I suppose someone could complain about a lot of effort for so little result [the clay pot behind the gardenia yielded just these four beets] but I am completely stoked over the result. The greens provided a second meal's vegetable and I quickly enhanced the soil and replanted more beet seeds with the hope I'll have vegetables before summer ends. There is no 'harvest season' here like in North America. Fruit and vegetables grow year round on their own harvest schedules.  Tomatoes don't see much of summer and soon I will be picking some farmer's crop for my canning pleasure.  

Keith,  Kev,  Paul and turkey

    But back to the present,  It's getting too warm to do serious indoor cooking and, while I would cook a Thanksgiving supper on the Fourth of July, this time we have an out-of-town guest.  A friend of Kevin was here from Melbourne and the sun went into hiding for two days. So I snipped some thyme, pulled some semi-developed onions and eased the beets out of soil.  The turkey stuffed and in the oven (the smell so great a torture to the neighbors not invited) then I cut corners on preparing the  beans and sweet potatoes. Hey, it wasn't that cool outside or in to do all sorts of casseroling.  The cranberry sauce was right out of a jar. It's the best part about cooking a T-giving dinner for neophytes, they don't know what it is supposed to look like and won't know where the skimping has been done. Our neighbor Keith, who loves roasted turkey, joined us.  
    So, modest as it was on all accounts, this Thanksgiving we were thankful for the harvest and friends to share it with.