neighborhood picnic

My parents hosted a neighborhood picnic in their backyard on Saturday. The residents living on Wedgewood Road came organized themselves several months ago to fight proposed re-zoning that would allow the field behind the street to be turned into high-density residences. My parents have lived there for at least twenty years; since I was eleven, so actually, that's closer to twenty-three years, now. I brought pecan pie and Texas caviar. Both recipes are from the Junior League Celebration Cookbook. My mom gave me a copy of it several years ago for an occasion: Christmas or birthday or something. Sometimes she gives me things for no reason, other than she loves me. I've tried one or two recipes from the book, and always receive compliments on the items and am often hounded for recipes, too.

This is a shot of the Texas caviar. It's great as a bean salad, and also as a dip. Ian always wants tortilla chips to accompany it. He's a big fan of dippable food. Ingredients are: pinto beans, black eyes peas, shoepeg corn, black beans, garbanzo beans, pimento, green chiles, celery, green pepper, and onion. That marinates for twenty-four hours in a mixture of sugar, vinegar, salt and pepper. And, it keeps for a few days...gets better the longer it stews in those juices.

My parents provided the chicken. It was the first time Mom tried Broasters chicken. When it comes to crispy chicken that's moist inside, you can't beat Broasters. There were wings, legs, and breasts. And, she also got a bunch of biscuits, too. I ate two legs. And I tried several of the yummy dishes brought by the neighbors.

The fruit salad was refreshing. The blueberries were huge. And, the salad wasn't covered with one of those sugary poppy-seed dressing things that typically accompany fruit salad. The pasta salad was good, but I am not a huge fan of pasta, unless it is macaroni and cheese, which was not in attendance, though it's cousin macaroni salad was. And those macaroni noodles were huge. I'm sure I've seen them that size before in the store, but I wasn't sure that anybody ever really bought them and used them.  What else? The cole slaw was good. Oh, but I think the thing that I loved most of all, that I went back for seconds for was this pineapple & cheese casserole that's obscured by the fruit salad. I found a recipe for it, and may try it sometime. Ian liked it too. My mother's neighbor Kirk said that he'd had it with ham as well, and that was really good, too.

There wasn't enough room for all the food. After the fact, Mom (she's on the left) admitted that she should have used another of the eight foot tables for dessert and drinks. She brought out a tv tray and an iron chair to keep all the desserts in one area. Since the women were keeping everything covered because of the fly situation, figuring out what the desserts were was difficult. I settled on a spoonful or two of trifle, a slice of red velvet cake, and a peanut butter cookie.