brunch

We've had house guests since June 24 so I haven't had time to focus on the blog. One guest, my brother, has left, but the others will be here until July 5. My oldest son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter are here for nine days. How will I manage when they leave? On Sunday, we had about 40 guests at a brunch in their honor, and since I cooked food mainly from this blog and a couple of others, I thought I'd describe what we served.

Actually, my plan was to photograph the table just before the guests arrived. The camera was out and ready but somehow, people were here and socializing and eating and the whole thing was over before I remembered about the pictures. So I can only describe what we had - and how long it took to make it, and post a picture of the table AFTER the event was over. This is a blog about easy cooking, so it was kind of a test to see just how easy it was. You know that preparing food for a party takes time, and when you have house guests and one of them is four months old, it's not easy to cook for an additional 35 people! We used a combination of store-bought and homemade dishes, and three friends brought food, because I possess the gene that causes me to believe there won't be enough. Duh. (Of course there was way too much, but this meant we could take it easy and not have to cook much the next day.)

First, the purchased food. We ordered five varieties of bagels from Gotham Bagel, a real New York bagel shop here in the Midwest. They also make amazing tofu cream cheese in THREE varieties so we got that, too. I had a plate of cucumber and tomato slices and small bowls of olives, muffaletto, raw cashews, grape tomatoes, kumquats, wasabi roasted almonds and who knows what else. I assembled a large platter of hummus, tabouli, bean salad and dolmas from Trader Joe's, accompanied by raw carrots and cucumbers, a basket of mini-pita bread and two kinds of crackers. Judy brought sweet potato salad and strawberries and Claire brought a mock tuna salad made from soaked sunflower seeds and cashews.

The day before the party, we did some baking. I made lemon syrup soaked hazelnut cake (substituting Brazil nuts), carrot bread and ginger bars and my husband made oatmeal chocolate chip and chewy chocolate chocolate chip cookies. (The chocolate chocolates were the hit of the dessert table) My friend Ann brought brownies. I also made sweet and tart carrots and marinated them overnight. In the middle of all this baking, we went on a garden tour.

I hit the kitchen at 6 a.m. the day of the brunch and started cooking. I was very organized and had a list of what to do and a pile of recipes. The only slowdown was that the refrigerator was so packed I couldn't find any of the ingredients. What with one eggplant up here and another down there, I had to keep calling my husband to find the things he had stuffed in. First I made tourlou tourlou from Mama's Taverna. I made so much - nearly a double recipe in two enameled cast iron pans - that I thought we'd be eating it all week, but that didn't happen. It was so popular that most of it disappeared. I made it with half the oil from the recipe and it still turned out great. (When I make it again for just us, I'll probably reduce the oil by half again.) I also made yummy Greek cabbage salad from the same blog.

Next I made bread pudding from Veganomicon, substituting frozen blueberries for the chocolate chips. My daughter-in-law said it tasted like french toast only better. (The blueberry idea came from Diet Dessert and Dogs.) Then, I threw together a pot of Nava Atlas' amazing coconut corn soup. (I had also cooked a bunch of chick peas the day before with the intention of making Norman's chick pea snack, but when I saw how much food there was, I decided to save them for another day.) My husband put together a fresh fruit salad. By 9:30 a.m. I was finished cooking. By 10 a.m. I had assembled the middle-eastern platter, filled the various bowls and was ready to relax until the guests arrived at 11. Now I'll have to do it all again so I can photograph it! (insert smiley face here...)