Part 2 (Bettina Gives a Luncheon continued)

How It Tasted

Strawberries au Natural

Moske: How can I eat when there’s paper on the plate?

Filip:   Look—these strawberries are hollow.

Me:     [the sound of grinding teeth]

Kornlet Soup

Incredibly sweet--so much so that even my husband and son (who normally adore corn) couldn't manage to empty their bowls.

Croutons

Just a couple of extra minutes in the oven resulted in these dreadful little pellets. Not something I’d care to feed my guests—unless they had hamster teeth and took their exercise on a wheel

Whipped Cream

Ultimately we used this for both the soup and the strawberries. Because it contained no sugar it reduced the overwhelming sweetness of both the soup and the powdered sugar that was served with the berries.

Salmon Timbales with Egg Sauce

These didn’t dry out nearly as much as I’d hoped while in the oven—a mistake using water- rather than oil-packed salmon. They tasted fine, but the odor of fish was all-pervasive (more on this later).

Buttered Beets

Moske: These are good—probably even better with some sour cream.

Filip:   Mine are cold. Can you heat them up for me?

I enjoyed these, as much for the color as the taste. I think they’d be really good mixed with vinegar or, as my husband suggested, a little sour cream.

Potato Croquettes

Mashed potatoes (heavy on the butter, milk, and salt) deep-fried in oil—a cardiologist’s nightmare but really really good. I’ve made this dish before and never failed to enjoy it. These potato balls were rich and light as soufflé but so much easier to prepare.

Pinwheel Biscuits

My son selected one of these biscuits and dropped it onto his plate--when it made an audible clunk he surreptitiously returned it to the serving dish. Out of a sense of duty I gnawed my way through one but my husband rejected them completely--they were horribly tough.

Vegetable Salad with Salad Dressing

Moske: Why haven’t you ever made these before?

Filip:   Refused the dressing but ate his salad down to the lettuce leaf at the bottom.

 These were every bit as good as they looked although the chopped nuts on top were a little froufrou.

Wafers

Produced by A & K Wong, Incorporated and basically flattened-out fortune cookies. I figured we’d be too stuffed at this point for anything more substantial and that’s exactly how it turned out.

Fancy Cakes with Whipped Mountain Icing

The cakes themselves were very nice—the mixture of lemon and vanilla extract was perfect—but again we’d eaten too much to do more than nibble on them.

The frosting? Well, I’ve already described all the trouble I had making that. It tasted good but definitely wasn’t worth all the trauma.

POSTSCRIPT: Within twenty-four hours every one of these cakes had been devoured—the cake recipe’s definitely a keeper (but fie! on the icing)

Coffee

I’m ordinarily not a coffee drinker, but this evening I poured myself a large cup and fortified it with plenty of cream and sugar. I knew as soon as the meal was over I’d have to turn my attention to the kitchen and the havoc I’d created therein.

BEFORE

AFTER

The Post Mortem

A lot went wrong with this meal, more in the preparation than how the food ultimately came out. So after a good night’s sleep, getting the kitchen back in order, and a great deal of serious thought I believe it boils down to this:

Timing

 I knew ahead of time (despite Bettina’s fervent denials) that this “cunning” meal was going to be the most challenging to date, and so I was careful to prepare in advance. I had no intention of letting this dainty luncheon take over the whole day, so I attended Mass as usual, got the kitchen in order beforehand, and took a brief nap so I’d be fresh as the proverbial daisy.

Wasted effort. One hour into meal prep I was ready to throw up my hands, shut down operations, and call out to Domino’s for a pizza.

Clean as the kitchen was to begin with, I neglected the important step of switching on the dishwasher for the final load. Consequently crucial items like the whisk and my large mixing bowl weren’t accessible, and I wasted precious time rummaging through the racks, hauling out the necessary equipment, and washing it by hand. In a remarkably short period of time all the dishcloths were sodden, stacks of dishes and utensils were dripping onto the counter, and I’d gone through an entire roll of paper towels.

It was also a hideous mistake (one of many) to announce oh-so-casually to my family that the meal would take just two hours to prepare and we’d surely be eating by five. When that hour came and went my husband and son began pacing the kitchen like hungry wolves, noses quivering as they hovered over the bubbling pots. It was at that point that a major household renovation went to the top of my To Do list—specifically a sturdy door for the kitchen that could be bolted from the inside.

I suppose it could also be considered a timing issue that the trouble I had with one dish inevitably led to problems with the next. Fussing over the thickness of the pinwheel dough led to the delay in getting the croutons into the oven—and then to my forgetting all about them when the White Mountain frosting disaster took center stage—which prevented me from getting the beets on the stove in time—and so on and so on.

Equipment Failure

This role this played in my kitchen troubles now seems painfully obvious: my equipment wasn’t clean and ready to go before I started cooking, I lacked the proper bowls and plates in which to place the finished dishes, and after a certain point I was no longer able to locate specific items on countertops covered with food scraps, utensils, and trash.

The bungalow apron failed me also—even with its protection my clothes came out so spotted and stained it looked like I’d spent the afternoon butchering pigs.

Lack of practice/intermediate cooking skills

 What I DIDN’T know going into this meal could fill a blog by itself: that oversized beets would take forever to cook, that water-packed salmon would make for a very messy dish, the experience necessary for tricky items like sauces and boiled icings. In the heat of battle I had three cookbooks open on the counter: Bettina’s, a Betty Crocker number dating from the 1960s, and a contemporary edition of The Joy of Cooking (the irony of this last absolutely kills me) Taken together the three provided contradictory and confusing advice and added to the general clutter as stuff piled up on every available surface.

The Menu

 Quite honestly, I’m amazed by the dishes editors Weaver and LeCron arranged for this particular occasion. Despite the pink and white touches most of the food looked drab and unappetizing--the corn soup, creamed salmon, and egg sauce practically indistinguishable. The only bit of color at the table was provided by the beets, the salad, and the pink lemonade I added at the last moment in an attempt to brighten things up.

And (forgive me, Bettina!) it seems a horrible mistake to serve fish at a supposedly dainty luncheon—unless one has a supply of clothespins on hand for the guests to clamp about their noses. The pervasive smell of canned salmon clung to my clothes, got into the other dishes (particularly the rolls and the potato croquettes), and swirled over the table like a genie when we finally sat down to eat.

Would I Make This Meal Again?

I’m usually up for a rematch when meals flounder from bad planning and/or lack of experience, but in this case I honestly don’t know. There just isn’t anything noteworthy or special about creamed salmon and corn. Take away frills like the doilies and that impossible cake frosting and you have a simple and reliable meal suitable for a weekday evening—really nothing more.