Cardboard mobile home.

Twelve-year-old boys teeter between playful imps and young men. It’s a fun thing to watch. One moment they are talking like young adults and the next they are rolling like puppies in the grass, climbing trees and hanging on rope swings.

Such was the way a few days ago when four neighborhood boys, including our son, built a house out of a cardboard box. (How ironic the box is from a Martha Stewart outdoor furniture set.)

Our son said, “Want to see our house?”

How could I resist? The house tour began.

The Outside

Removable flag

It looks cobbled together carelessly with its spray-painted graffiti style, but there was a plan. The word “EPIC” means awesome, I am told. The protruded box on top of the house is supposed to be gold but they ran out of paint. A flag flies and many of the fine points of the house are constructed from brightly-colored Duct tape.

The Inside

Our son explains: “Here’s a sliding roof that leads to a periscope-type lookout place. The drawings on the wall are ours and everyone who worked on the house has his name spray painted in it.”

“Up here (and he points to the place where you can look out the top), is the give a penny, get a penny place.” (And there were several coins on the cardboard ledge.)

I asked, “What’s that?

“You know, like at 7-11 and stores like that, they say ‘give a penny, get a penny’…like if you take a penny or a dime to round out your bill, you put one back the next time. But, it doesn’t always work, because some people take but don’t give anything back.”

I replied, “You mean some people are takers and not givers?”

“Yeah,” he said solemnly.

Hospitality is to give more than you expect to receive. It comes from the heart. Can my husband and I teach this to our son? Or does he come by it naturally? Nature or nurture?

I don’t know the answer. I just know that I’m documenting this day and this house. I want to see if my son grows up to be the kind of man his father is – one who takes a wedge of cheese, serves it on a plate with whatever he has on hand, and makes you feel like he was waiting just for you.

Boys’ artwork adorn interior walls.

I heard the boys are now planning for the demolition of the house. The fun never ends!

Home builders’ signatures

Fruit by Jennifer Norris.

My country,’ tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From every mountainside let freedom ring!
[Samuel F. Smith, 1808-1895]

Today is Memorial Day. Here in the United States, we honor those who have served and given the ultimate sacrifice so we can live in freedom. Please remember those who wear the uniform. Kiss a veteran today (I did!…my husband, Bill).

Enjoy your cookouts and picnics! As always, thanks for reading.

]]> http://barbaragarneaukelley.com/2012/05/28/let-freedom-ring/feed/ 2 barbaragarneaukelley watermellon http://barbaragarneaukelley.com/2012/05/18/feeding-the-traveler-or-what-do-eloping-and-chili-have-in-common/ http://barbaragarneaukelley.com/2012/05/18/feeding-the-traveler-or-what-do-eloping-and-chili-have-in-common/#comments Fri, 18 May 2012 18:29:57 +0000 Barbara Garneau Kelley http://barbaragarneaukelley.com/?p=1811 Continue reading →]]> Once again, I couldn’t decide on the better title so I put them both.

Mom always said you should have something ready to eat for when the travelers arrive. It didn’t matter what time of day or night they arrive or how long it took them to get there, they would be hungry, she said.

Eloping

In 1998, I took my new husband home to Florida to meet mom and dad. (Key words “new” and “meet.”) I met Bill, and six months to the day from when we met, we were married. We started planning a wedding but mom was ill with cancer and the thought of putting her through travel and a wedding was too much for me to think of. So, Bill and I eloped at 5 p.m. the night before Thanksgiving. It was an elopement complete with a wedding Mass, two priests on the altar, and some surprise guests who showed up at the historic Old Post Chapel at Fort Meade, Maryland. (Word apparently leaked out about something special happening at Mass.) A few weeks later, I took my new husband home to meet the parents. It was a done deal, mom and dad, so you better like him!

We traveled from Maryland to Florida. Mom was not doing well but you can guess the rest. We arrived and she had a meal ready for us. Bill remembers the menu to this day: her homemade chili, corn bread, tortilla chips and all the toppings. Dessert was a store-bought cake but that’s okay mom, you were not the healthy mom who baked all those wonderful goodies for so many years.

They loved Bill and Bill loved them. She lived long enough to hold our newborn baby boy, Patrick, now 12, born in October 1999. Some say she died happy because of that.

Mom was my teacher in the how and why you fed others. Food for the traveler just makes so much sense. It’s more than just the nourishment. It’s sitting together over food to get acquainted or re-acquainted. It breaks the ice. It says, “You are welcome here.”

Good Foods for the Traveler

Sometimes you don’t know when people will arrive, so food that keeps in the oven or on the stove, or even a well-prepared cold-cut plate, are good options. Chili or homemade soup paired with a salad and bread works well. Grilled cheese is great for late-night arrivals. (Assemble the sandwiches ahead of time and put them on the griddle when people arrive.) Other options are crockpot recipes. These will keep warm as long as you need them to without the meat getting tough. Plus, all you do when people arrive is serve the food, no need to fuss with the prep so you can focus on the ones who traveled to see you.

Pot Roast – A Great Choice

Chipotle Pot Roast in Slow Cooker

A pot roast is typically a chuck roast which is cooked slow and long to make it tender. Its nature makes it a good food to have holding for the arrivals. It’s not a cut of meat you would put on the grill and enjoy like a steak. For more on Beef 101, here is an informative blog by the Frugal Dad.

And, below is a succulent crockpot/pot roast recipe from my sister, Susie. She says it’s a “McKinney family favorite.” I cooked it and I can see why. Maybe it will become a favorite of yours too.

What do you like to make to welcome your travelers?

Chipotle-Seasoned-Slow-Cooked Pot Roast

• 2 packets (1.25 oz each) Ortega Chipotle Taco Seasoning Mix (use one packet at a time)
• 1 boneless chuck roast (about 3lbs)
• 1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 jars (16 oz, each) Ortega Garden Vegetable Salsa
• 1 cup water
• 1 pound small red potatoes
• 4 carrots, peeled and cut into two-inch lengths
• 1 large onion, quartered

Rub one packet seasoning mix over both sides of roast.

Heat olive oil in Dutch oven or large skillet over medium heat. Add roast and sear both sides until browned. Transfer roast to slow cooker (crockpot).

Combine salsa, water and remaining seasoning mix; pour into slow cooker to cover roast.

Cover and cook on high for three to four hours. Turn roast over. Add potatoes, carrots, and onion. Cover and cook on high for one hour longer.

Remove roast and vegetables to serving platter. Let cooking liquid stand five minutes to allow fat to rise. Skim off fat and discard.

Make the sauce: Pour two cups cooking liquid into saucepan; cook and stir over medium heat 10 minutes or until sauce has thickened. Serve with roast.

Our job as parents: be great fans. It’s not so hard when you have parents like LeeAnn and Glen. They are low key and loyally show up for every game and enthusiastically cheer for their 12-year-old son and the team.

Word spread quickly down to my end of the bleachers when LeeAnn said: “Barbara, we have cheese and crackers down here. Tell everyone down there to come down here.” It didn’t take us long to check it out. It wasn’t fancy but it was just what it took to make the night game even more festive and bring everyone together. A plastic, pre-packaged tray filled with a variety of cheeses, pepperoni, olives and a few packs of crackers made a party. Add some red-cup libation and that is what I call Bleacher Hospitality.

Parties, get-togethers, shindigs, whatever you call them don’t have to be fancy — they just have to be spirited and from the heart. Thanks, LeeAnn and Glen. You know how to throw a party!

P.S.: Our team won and our son hit his first out-of-the-park home run. I’m glad I can record the stat in this blog to live in virtual perpetuity because I gave up hard-copy scrapbooking a long time ago. He would be mortified if he knew I’m writing this.

Here’s to all the boys and girls of summer and their loyal fans. Now go cheer on your favorite team!

Summertime Stuffed Cucumbers. I garnished mine with mixed greens and edible flowers.

Cheese and crackers are the good ole standby when it comes to hors d’oeuvres or nibblers during happy hour. Keep a hard cheese like a smoked gouda, a soft cheese like Brie, and a spreadable one like Boursin, on hand in the fridge. Keep water crackers in the pantry and you’re always ready for pop-ins or spontaneous happy hours.

Try These…Stuffed Cucumbers

For those times when you have a little extra time, here is an easy appetizer. These are a little lighter bite than cheese and crackers which is nice if you plan to serve dinner too. You can vary the recipe according to what you have on hand. Here is my recipe then I’ll tell you how you might change it up it depending on what you have available. If you have a garden with fresh cukes a plenty, keep the other ingredients stocked.

Recipe for Summertime Stuffed Cucumbers

• Cucumbers, any variety, but I like the English cucumbers
• Cream cheese, 8 oz, softened at room temperature (or if hurried, soften in microwave)
• Feta cheese, 1/2 cup, adjust for your taste
• 3 Tablespoons milk or desired amount for consistency
• 1/2 cup ripe, pitted olives, chopped
• 1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped

Wash and score cucumbers with a fork to give them that fancy look.

Cut off the ends and cut the cucumber into approx. one-inch slices. Hollow out the pulp.

Mix together cream cheese and milk until softened. Add feta cheese, olives and parsley. Spoon mixture into cucumbers. Garnish with a sprig of parsley.

Serve the stuffed cukes on a pretty platter and enjoy.

The Variations are Endless
I bet you can think of some ingredients too.

Substitute blue cheese for feta.

Use only cream cheese and season with fresh chives, basil, or dried spices like Herbes de Provence.

Add chopped marinated red peppers or sun-dried tomatoes instead of olives. Use green olives or capers.

A dash of Worcester sauce or hot sauce will spice it up.

These are two of my favorite pleasures….and can you believe they show up in a photo together? I contrived this little display with edible orchids from Gourmet Sweet Botanicals and paired them with my Brownie Blooms and mint sprigs.

The photo was taken by Cindy Dyer. For more of her botanical eye candy, see A Garden Muse. No, you can’t eat the images in her photos, but you sure can eat my orchids and Brownie Blooms.

Photo by Cindy Dyer

Is there a better match for strawberries than cheesecake? I made these as part of an afternoon tea buffet for A Garden Muse reception for Photographer Cindy Dyer’s macro photography botanical exhibit at Green Spring Gardens in Alexandria, Virginia. These wonderful bites were scooped up in no time.

Difficulty Level…None!
Wash, hull and hollow out medium-size strawberries. Buy a quality New York-style cheesecake like the one from Trader Joe’s. Use a melon ball scooper and stuff the cheesecake into the strawberries. Dip the top in graham cracker crumbs. How easy it that? They can be made the day ahead and wrapped tightly. Garnish with all that mint you have wildly taking over your garden as I did in this photo.

I found this ingenious recipe on My Sweet Life.  And, oh, it is such a sweet life! Thank you, Kelley Hospitality readers.

Tea sandwiches with edible flowers.

I catered a spring afternoon garden tea last week for an art exhibit titled “A Garden Muse” at Green Spring Gardens in Alexandria, Virginia. My menu was inspired by Artist Cindy Dyer’s exhibit of breathtaking botanical photography. View her exhibit here and you will see why I was so inspired. Her work is nature at its best and I wanted my food to be worthy of such an exhibit.

I went to see the exhibit before I decided on the menu and I was glad I did. After taking in her macro images of flowers, my first instinct was to use edible flowers, but what did I know about them? I know one thing I want to share right up front: NOT ALL FLOWERS ARE EDIBLE. In fact, some are poisonous. Don’t assume if a dish in a restaurant is garnished with a flower that the flower is edible. Do not purchase flowers to eat from florists or roadside stands; grow them yourself or buy them from a reputable horticultural vendor. They have to be grown without any pesticides and in a perfectly-Ph-balanced soil.

Enough scare tactics. I purchased my edible flowers from Gourmet Sweet Botanicals. They were fresh, gorgeous and most of all, safe to eat. I chose the Premium Flowers Mix. The description on their website read: “Elegant assortment of edible flowers with full array of colors; fragrant, colorful, and versatile; an extraordinary garnish for any entree or dessert; create beautiful presentations on multiple dishes with this amazing collection!”

This sounded exactly what I was looking for. They were not exaggerating in their description. The box was sent by FedEx, packed with three small ice packs, and included, but was not limited to, the following flowers:

Marigold

I’ll prove it to you that you can eat these!

These familiar flowers are common in flower beds because their blooms are vibrant yellow, orange, and red. Who would have known they have a citrus flavor? In a bold move to prove to a guest that the flowers were, indeed, edible, I popped a marigold in my mouth, chewed, and swallowed. I rather liked its zing. And, I did this all without wincing.

zucchini bread with white crysthansamum and blackberries

Nasturtium

“Jethro, fetch me some salt…these fleurs are so dang peppery they need a little.”

These red, yellow and orange flowers were tasty and “peppery” and worked well with the tea sandwiches.

Orchid

“Please, darling, would you be so kind to pass me another orchid while I sit here and look pretty?”

Nibbling on these, bright pinkish-purple flowers with their mildly sweet crunch gives one a sense of exquisiteness.

Stuffed cucumbers adorned with edible flowers

Pansy

“Oh don’t be a pansy, eat a pansy, would ya!”

These ubiquitous spring annuals are a spectacular combination of colors: purple, blue, yellow, orange, lavender, and violet. These silky flowers (which they added to my purchase as a free sample) were surprisingly bland which was safe for those timid souls wondering if they should really take a tea sandwich. Any flavor the pansies had were masked with Alouette cheese. Pansies will always be on my must-have list.

Viola

“Viola, dear, could you float a viola on top of my gin and tonic? I’ll be waiting by the pool.”

Their purple with yellow and blue hues was striking. They had a mild taste with a hint of tartness. Gourmet Sweet Botanicals says they are fantastic on cheesecakes, desserts and salads, or floating on drinks.

Snapdragon

“Mom! Don’t blog about these. They are terrible!”

These unusually-shaped flowers have a bitter-tart flavor much like radicchio. Their odd shape added dimension to the tea sandwiches. Our 12-year-old son wanted to try one when they arrived. He created a lot of drama around the tasting. Well, he won’t eat radicchio either.

Rose

I hate being upstaged.

They sent small rose blossoms but it was the one big, fat rose in the middle of the package that made me laugh. I had visions of chomping on it at the end of the day, leaning in the corner with a glass of wine while others looked at me like I was a nut-case. (Kind of like Daryl Hannah in Splash when she ate the lobster whole, shell and all.)

Roses are 95 percent water and, therefore, low in calories. Thank goodness because something had to be low calories that day! They also contain Vitamin C and fibers, so eat up. I didn’t get to eat the rose but one bold man was caught on camera chomping down. (Drat! Upstaged by a rose-eating man!)

Michael S. chomps on the rose.

Artist Palette Open-Faced Tea Sammies

Since I was preparing an afternoon garden tea for a botanical photography exhibit, I thought about tea sandwiches, but they couldn’t be ordinary. How about a piece of bread being the palette for various spreads, herbs and flowers?

I used flower-shaped cookie cutters to cut dense bread for the open-faced tea sandwiches. Two different spreads – cream cheese softened with milk and chopped chives, and a spreadable Alouette cheese — served as the next layer. Then, I topped the “palette” with the flowers on some and red and yellow peppers and herbs on the others.

Use flower-shaped cookie cutters for the tea-sandwich bread.

Since Gourmet Sweet Botanicals were so generous in their quantities, I had plenty of extra blooms to create my garden of food. What more can I say? Let the pictures tell it all. Something tells me I’ll be playing around with edible flowers again and again and again. Until I blog about more of the menu items, enjoy the show.

My neighbor gave me a gift jar of dry chocolate cookie batter to make “Chocolate Crinkles.” All I had to do was add one egg and Cool Whip. Cool Whip?  I was skeptical about the Cool Whip part. The cookies were chewy and moist just like they should be. I know now it was a chocolate cake mix and the Cool Whip gave it the crackly texture after rolling the dough in confectioner’s sugar and baking it.

Cool Whip resurfaced last week when I found a Lemon Burst Cake Mix Cookie recipe on Tidy Mom’s blog. The same procedure: add Cool Whip and an egg to a cake mix! How easy is that?

So, your well-stocked pantry can include a lemon or chocolate cake mix and Cool Whip in the freezer. You can make homemade cookies in a jif.

Photo by CIndy Dyer

Lemon Crinkles
Adapted from Tidy Mom’s Recipe

• 1 box lemon cake mix
• 1- 8 oz container Cool Whip
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup powdered sugar (for rolling)

Hint: I’m a lemon lover, so I added a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice with the pulp and 1/4 teaspoon of lemon zest.

Preheat oven to 350°

In medium bowl, beat Cool Whip, egg, cake mix, lemon juice and zest, until well blended. Dough will be thick and sticky.

Drop by teaspoonfuls into a bowl of powdered sugar and roll to coat.

Place on parchment lined cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes. The parchment paper is essential. Let the cookies completely cool on the sheet or they are too gooey to remove.Hint:If you don’t have parchment paper then grease a cookie sheet with Crisco and flour it. Don’t use wax paper. (I can attest to that failure.)

Easter basket ready for blessing.

In the Polish tradition and many of the eastern European countries, Easter baskets are blessed the day before Easter, known as Holy Saturday. Baskets are filled with a sampling of the foods to be eaten on Easter Sunday. The contents vary according to its owners. I’ve seen baskets filled with butter in the shape of a lamb, Easter candy, colored eggs, Polish sausages, leg of lamb, ham, asparagus, Greek Easter bread, flowers, candles, wine, salt, and anything that will represent the Easter dinner. Swieconka (sh-vee-en-soon-kah), as this tradition is known in Poland, is one of the most enduring and beloved Polish traditions.

Easter lamb made of butter.

Not being Polish and not living in Eastern Europe, I came to this tradition late, but nonetheless, it is one that I’ve cherished on Holy Saturday mornings for the last ten years. My friend Melanie always makes me a lamb made out of butter from a special mold. One year I asked her where I can get a mold, and she said no need, she will just keep making me one every year. Lucky me!

Blessed baskets

This morning’s baskets did not disappoint. After the priest blessed the baskets (and us), we admired each other’s selections. I love to see what everyone brings as a representation of their Easter food. My basket had asparagus, chocolates, colored eggs, tulips, Spanish wine, vodka, limes, strawberries, and perhaps most important to me, salt and baking soda. I will use the blessed salt and baking soda throughout the year in all my recipes. Although I will still burn my share of cookies or have a dish that flops, blessed salt can’t hurt, right?

There is something that feels good about resurrecting a tradition from the past or borrowing one from another county and making it your own. The old ways really do work. Happy Easter!

The brownish egg was colored by boiling it with onion skins, an old-timey way to color eggs in Poland.