Part 2 (A Sunday Evening Tea continued)

How It Tasted

Salmon Salad with Jellied Vegetables

Milomir: Please don’t ever make this again.

A box of tea launched the American Revolution…Ghandi’s handful of salt struck a major blow against the British Empire…and salmon salad with jellied vegetable sparked flat out rebellion at the Mostic dining room table.

In terms of repulsiveness this gruesome twosome by far surpassed Bettina’s bread crumb teacakes—something I never would have believed possible.

How best to describe it...overcooked vegetables glued together with petroleum jelly? A bowl of cat vomit garnished with hardboiled egg slices? Words and images simply fail here—I’m totally at a loss.

Equally noteworthy was the reaction of my husband and son. Both threw down their forks after the first bite (smart move) while I, the lug nut, grimly chewed on in an attempt to “show” them that it wasn’t as bad as it looked.

Boston Brown Bread

I honestly can’t vote, either yay or nay, on the success of this dish. So preoccupied was I in eating and then keeping down the salmon salad that I hardly noticed it was on the table.

Husband and Son tried it though and both thought it was OK. They each ate a couple of slices spread with butter and both viewed it (as predicted) as more as a dessert than part of the main course.

Sliced Fresh Peaches

These peaches were a balm to my traumatized stomach, and in fact we all seemed to like them. Boiling the skins softened the fruit to an amazing degree—almost too much--but eaten with cream they were tasty and at least a moderately successful.

One Egg Cake with Chocolate Icing

Sadly this cake wasn’t nearly as good as it looked. The taste was fine, but the minimal amounts of fat and egg called for in the recipe had a negative effect on the texture. It reminded of a day-old supermarket cakes be purchased at half price—seemingly stale, although I’d taken it out of the oven just hours before. Eaten with the peaches and cream it was edible, but I really couldn’t call it a success.

Iced Tea

This went a long way toward salvaging the meal and was the one true success. My husband appreciated the mint and the fact that I’d cut down on the ice cubes this time around, my son liked the lemon flavor, and I was happy a beverage on hand—any beverage—to help wash down the globs of gelatin still lingering in my esophagus.

Would I Make This Again?

Only in a hostage situation—and with a gun pressed to my head.

It’s been a few days and still it’s hard for me to think objectively about this tea. The fallout from that bomb of a salad was so great that trying to get through the rest of the meal was like supping under a mushroom cloud. Even now the memory of the salad still lingers--like a foul taste in one’s mouth, or a bad dream looping all throughout the night.

In Bettina’s world this meal would have had her guests scrambling over each other to get to the door—and then to the hospital, where their stomachs could be pumped. The salmon salad really was that bad, that terrible...something people would have to be paid to eat—say, a hundred dollars a mouthful.