Cornucopia

 

sweet woodruff

This past weekend was a pretty nice weekend.  I did a lot of cooking.  I listened to some great music while I did all that cooking.  I replayed the 2004 World Series with my brother with the Strat-o-matic baseball simulation game.  And I ate a lot of great food along the way while watching some great movies.  Take out the burst of heat that Mother Nature has given us as a probable last gasp of summer, and I would have no complaints.

My kitchen logo for these past few days should be the horn of plenty, the cornucopia.  I had platters of things scattered around the kitchen as one batch of food was finished and another started.  I made mini cumin buns, a tasty bite-sized bun that is flavored with cumin and that can be topped and filled with many different things.  To go along with those, I made two different egg salads, one creamy and one savory with lots of layers of flavor.  I also made tuna rillettes which go nicely with the cumin buns as well.  I made two different kinds of cookies (part of the weekly menu offerings), braised peas with cream and egg yolks, lemon slush, and vanilla poppy seed muffins with lemon streusel (which will soon be on the full menu).  The only thing I didn't get to make that was in the plans for the weekend was lava field brownies (again, part of the weekly menu offerings).  I use a specific chocolate with a specific cacao content (the % level you see on many packages of chocolate), and unfortunately the global health crisis currently in play has affected supply chains for some things including this particular chocolate.  So, being unable to procure it, I had to tell everyone that the lava field brownies wouldn't be available as planned this past weekend.  Usually I keep enough of all the varieties of chocolates I use on hand so that supplies don't run low.  But this has been an unusual year and supplies of some things are harder to keep on hand than in more normal times.  Sometime soon, you will see the lava field brownies offered again.

But, going back to the cornucopia, I find it tremendously satisfying to put out a bunch different food items all at once.  There's something quite peace-inducing about a table laden with many different types of food.  To see an abundance of edible deliciousness (yes, that's a word...) and to know that so many yummy things are there for the taking, well, could you ask for anything better?

So here's a toast to the end of summer as it approaches, and to harvests of great food whether they are in the fields across the countryside or in your own kitchen.  Fill that horn of plenty and then eat until it is empty, and then fill it again.