Her bring a salad was generally gado gado with what can only be described as a most excellent peanut sauce (three secret ingredients, all of them essential). The thing about gado gado is it’s so easy and has something for everyone.
But sometimes, when she looked at the salad table after she had put the gado gado down, she wondered how long it would be before people started to say ‘there’s ThirdCat’s gado gado‘ in the way they might say ‘and there’s Aunty Mary’s curried eggs’.
I thought for years, in my rural childhood, that the (usually uncomma’d in the notices) phrase ‘Ladies bring a plate’ was part of the definition of a lady — and also believed implicitly in the corollary, which was that if you didn’t bring a plate, it meant you were a scrubber.
The more specific Yorke Peninsula version was ‘Ladies a mornay please’.
My salad is usually the potato salad from the tapas recipe book, the one with the homemade garlic mayo, but now you’ve got me worrying that maybe they all think ‘There’s Pav’s smartarse Spanish potato salad’.
Oh well. I’d propose a bloggy group recipe book where we all donate the recipes of the things we habitually ‘bring’, but I know in advance that Anthony at Spiceblog would whup all our asses.
I thought for years, in my rural childhood, that the (usually uncomma’d in the notices) phrase ‘Ladies bring a plate’ was part of the definition of a lady — and also believed implicitly in the corollary, which was that if you didn’t bring a plate, it meant you were a scrubber.
The more specific Yorke Peninsula version was ‘Ladies a mornay please’.
My salad is usually the potato salad from the tapas recipe book, the one with the homemade garlic mayo, but now you’ve got me worrying that maybe they all think ‘There’s Pav’s smartarse Spanish potato salad’.
Oh well. I’d propose a bloggy group recipe book where we all donate the recipes of the things we habitually ‘bring’, but I know in advance that Anthony at Spiceblog would whup all our asses.
It probably depends how you put the salad on the table. Is it \’well, I\’ll just put this little salad in the middle now, it\’s nothing really, just a little Spanish potato salad, I got so addicted to it while I was on sabbatical in Barcelona\’? Or do you just quietly put it in the middle and feel sick in your stomach until at least someone has eaten it?I think, like comedy, salad is all in the delivery.
Do you make the mayo part of the garlic mayo yourself? That would be impressive. To me, anyway.
Mornay would be much better spelt mournay, don\’t you think. And you are right about the please. Where are my manners? Must be listening to my children too much.
I always bring a cake. In fact, I always bring a black forest cheesecake. It was my mother’s secret recipe and now it is mine. I find I experience less angst when I bring a cake. I never wonder, will anyone eat my cake? There’s always salad left over and one is forced to bring it home again and eat it for the next three days as it goes gradually soggier. There’s never any black forest cheesecake left. Unfortunately.
My cakes get left…
I have found with cakes that it helps to cut a few slices and let them sit invitingly sort of out a bit from the rest of the cake but still in formation. Then it’s easier for people to just grab a bit than to make bunnies of themselves wrestling with knives and such, much less publicly violating the virgin cake.
I used to make a chocolate Christmas log (icing-sugar snow, robins, holly, the whole nine yards) every year for the departmental Christmas party. That was definitely a case of ‘There’s Pav’s Christmas log’, but none of it ever got left, either. Slices, see.
I have found with cakes that it helps to cut a few slices and let them sit invitingly sort of out a bit from the rest of the cake but still in formation. Then it’s easier for people to just grab a bit than to make bunnies of themselves wrestling with knives and such, much less publicly violating the virgin cake.
I used to make a chocolate Christmas log (icing-sugar snow, robins, holly, the whole nine yards) every year for the departmental Christmas party. That was definitely a case of ‘There’s Pav’s Christmas log’, but none of it ever got left, either. Slices, see.
One memorable neighbourhood party, I arrived with a cheese platter decorated with flowers made from vegetables. The latest food book from America and I’d made a pretty good fist of it but I might as well have thrown some cheezels and a spring onion on cardboard.
Not only did I learn to dumb down for these turns but food down as well. I still do a magnificent radish rose and proud of it.
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