The Feast

A friend of mine is moving to Houston. I found out Friday that she's flying away Sunday morning, so I invited her and another couple of friends for dinner tonight. We were sad to say goodbye, though I'm sure we'll see each other again. It was a lovely feast.

For appetizers, we had a wedge of brie and thin sliced baguette along with little round red pickled peppers stuffed with fresh mozzarella.

Dinner was seafood shish kabobs -- ahi tuna fish, scallops and shrimp alternated with red and green peppers, mushrooms and Vidalia onions. After I skewered the kabobs, I poured light Italian dressing over them. Since one of the attendees is a good ol' Missouri farm boy and the Engineer is a bottomless pit, a filet of wild sockeye salmon was grilled beside the kabobs just to make sure no one went hungry.

We had fresh corn on the cob and home made potato salad. The enormous Armenian cucumber (see July 19th) sacrificed itself as a salad. It was delicious.

Desert was blackberry cobbler warm from the oven with genuine, whipped on the spot, cream. I bought the blackberries this morning along with the corn at the produce stand.

I think everyone in attendance left the table sufficiently suffoncified (as my Dad always says.)

Easy Blackberry Cobbler Recipe

Pick over, wash and drain 3 pints of fresh blackberries.

Heat oven to 375. Put 1/4 pound (1 stick) of butter or margarine in an 8" x 8" deep baking pan and melt it in the oven.

As the butter melts, mix together 1 cup of flour, 3/4 cup of sugar and 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder with 3/4 cup of milk.

Pour batter evenly over hot melted butter, then distribute the blackberries over the top. Do not stir.

Bake at 375 for 45 minutes. Serve warm with ice cream or whipped cream (I like mine topped with yogurt.)

Random image of a bonsai that I trained for a year and a half.
It died while I was on vacation.