Quoting Michael Loo to All on 10-11-19 12:29 <=-

The first order of the day was to be brave and try the third
new Snickers flavor - it had a distinct mapleish flavor whose
intensity made it seem artificial (I believe that the claim
is made that all the flavors are natural). As with its
siblings, it was on the smooth side and cloyingly sweet.

The demo person at the BJ's I got them from not only claimed the maple
as the best of the three, she also confessed to claiming most from the
bags she was demo-ing for herself, couldn't stop eating them... ;) At
the end of the picnic, Ruth took all leftover maple ones, and Mark went
home with the rest of the bag... :)

Someone else will have to report on most of the tastes of the
day, as it was my turn to cook - on official picnic day
Saturday I had mostly stayed out of the kitchen or supervised
or shirked my duties or whatever you choose to call it.

You'd spent a good part of the time doing the honors with the steak and
kidney pie, don't forget... :) Besides, I don't think you missed any of
the Sunday tastes... I didn't note anything that you didn't mention...
well, maybe the dried pineapple was on Sunday.... and the citrus olives
with the bit of preserved lemon in it...?

I took the Apollo brand phyllo and went to work on it. Boy,
it drinks a lot of butter. Seven layers of butter-brushed
dough on the bottom of an 8x8, the chilled filling poured
over, seven more layers of dough, four butter-brushed, but
I didn't want to open another stick of butter, so the last
few were sprayed with Pam. Into the oven until the pastry
was brown. Meanwhile, I boiled a syrup of approximately 1/3
each of water, sugar (raw), and honey, Ceylon cinnamon for
flavoring, this to pour on top. Traditionally it's poured on
to soak into the dessert, but I used less sugar and caused
less sugar to be ingested, given our age and health issues.
When this got eaten, people seemed to like it okay (it was
indeed not too sweet), and Ruth allowed that maybe cream of
wheat wasn't that horrible after all.

I was just as glad it wasn't as sweet as many Greek desserts tend to
be... and it was quite nice... :)

My main project was skordalia to be served with fried
eggplant and zucchini, in order to demonstrate that I could
be induced to eat potatoes and zucchini and that Steve
could be induced to eat eggplant. Funny, he's Italian, don't
Italians love eggplant?

Perhaps not all of them.... besides, I think he's half something else,
maybe German...?

The oil was from Knidia, an organic I think eco-enterprise
run by Nancy's son's lady's family. It was delicate in flavor
with a moderate oiliness and went well.

Pretty sure it was organic, and eco-enterprise is probably also
accurate... grown, processed and bottled by his niece and her husband...

sag at times. So the vegetables took longer to cook, and the
batter didn't brown as much as it might have. Nonetheless, what
came out was tender food in a sturdy crunchy batter ideal for
dipping into the skordalia, which made things, even zucchini,
taste okay. To my dismay, though, Steve abandoned the eggplant
and started eating the potatoes by themselves.

The skordalia was indeed quite tasty on its own, though... :) And made
a very nice dipping sauce for the battered veggies... :)

Mark had brought a pot of his famous beans. These were as I
understand a fairly festive batch, containing lots of ham hock
meat, fat, and skin. Otherwise they were your good old stick-
to-your-ribs southern fare. They would have gone well with
biscuits, but I'm not a starchy person so can't report. I did
eat almost enough of the beans to cause distress to the people
in the neighborhood, though.

They were indeed very tasty... and I don't even care all that much for
beans usually... :) Must have been that ham hock meat, fat and skin
that did it... :)

He also sacrificed a jar of Sechler's sweet orange strip pickles
from his pantry. These were exceedingly sweet and just a tad
orangey, as much a dessert as a pickle. I liked these better
than most of us did.

I liked them well enough, as I remember... :)

ttyl neb

... The answer is "maybe" ... and that's semi-final.

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