September 12, 2009

Corn, Ice Cream & a Dessert Potluck for an Entire Town

This post is long overdue by just about any person's standards, but since I've only just about finished my unpacking, I still haven't cooked in the new place and so now is an opportune time to share this with y'all.

(btw, there truly is something wrong with this scenario that WILL be fixed this weekend. more specifically, i WILL be cooking this weekend. thank goodness!)

While spending 4th of July weekend in
Texas with my Grandma Mary Lou, we did some cooking and the like. Among the dishes we made was corn grilled with butter and fresh parsley from her garden.

Talk about fun. Not having a yard, I don't have a garden. Having a cat that likes to get into things, I don't have a window sill herb garden. So, for me, it was a novelty to go out to the
garden and pick fresh herbs. Especially since I had to remember which bits of green were parsley and which bits of green I should avoid like the plague. (for the record, i was successful in this venture.)

The corn turned out fabulous. So simple and fresh. I will caution others though to not peel back the husks about two minutes after the corn comes off the grill unless you actually enjoy the sensation of having the top layers of skin on your fingertips singed a bit. I don't, but I still did it. Not very bright, eh?

We also made a few other goodies, including burgers, baked beans and potato salad. No photos of those though. I blame the lack of photos on the homemade ice cream. Not that I have any photograhic evidence of that either. But, let me tell you, when your grandma is an officer in the town's Garden Club and said Garden Club has promised to coordinate the potluck dessert table for the town's 4th of July celebration, there isn't a lot of time to be wasted and certainly not enough time to be taking pictures.

For her contribution, Grandma Mary Lou made
the kind of ice cream that you make in those wooden bucket ice cream makers with the ice and freezing salt you put down the sides.

Please excuse me for a moment, but...

Hello! You mean I get to dump ice and salt all over the place and will be rewarded with homemade ice cream? Really? Wow... It was like being a kid again because, gosh darn it, I was going to make darned sure there was plenty of ice and salt dumped on the ice cream maker if it meant I had first dibs on the ice cream.

And bless my Grandma. I did have first dibs. When we pulled the paddle out, she gave it right over to me so that I could eat all the ice cream off of it. Granted, this priviledge would be part of the beauty of having been the only grandkid on the premises. Regardless, I still would've called dibs and won. I'm sure of it. Well, relatively sure.

Anyhow... I got first dibs on the ice cream and it was heaven. On the downside for me, we had to share. Darn the Garden Club and its promise to coordinate the town's
4th of July dessert potluck!

Now, in case you're wondering about this town potluck and whether or not the whole town attended, I can tell you that yes, in fact, just about the whole town attended. Like I said before, it's a small town. Plus, I have reason to know because, in addition to coordinating the dessert potluck, the Garden Club also served up the desserts. And, somehow, I was dragooned into helping.

Okay. So I wasn't really dragooned into helping, but what else was I supposed to do when confronted with picnic table after picnic table of sheet cakes that hadn't been cut before they were brought to the potluck? Just stand there and stare? No. I couldn't do that. Instead, I grabbed a spatula (there wasn't a knife to be found anywhere) and got to work cutting cake for the town's 4th of July Dessert Potluck brought to you by the Garden Club.

Also, while two of these three of pictures don't have much of anything at all to do with the grilled corn, ice cream or other goodies I helped make while visiting my grandma, I wanted to share them nonetheless.

As background, Grandma Mary Lou lives
on the very southern edge of town and, across the road to the east, is a neighbor's field. To south and west of her house are the old golf course and more fields. Personally, I find the landscape fascinating and gorgeous in its own right and I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I do.

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