An Americana Food Moment

If you wondered what happened to us this week or wondered why there were no blogs, here is what happened. I was NOT buried under our compost pile, though this could happen. I was not unable to type due to rose thorns in my fingers though my hands do look a bit well used right now, since I never have found any garden gloves I really like. And no, I was not taken sick by one too many krispy kreme donuts. William hid his stash in his room to prevent that.

We were just experiencing a 21st century technology glitch

Our high speed internet server was down for the entire state of New Hampshire for part of Tuesday, all of Wednesday and until days end Thursday. It is always a shock to realize how dependent I am on all this new technology. So much of the flow of Green Hope Farm is via e-mail and now I am also a blog addict.

With a resumption of service comes a resumption of news from here.

We had a party for Jayn Bier who left Green Hope Farm to go to Virginia on a more permanent basis. Our surprise bon voyage party had the theme of Americana heartland junk food. As you may have noticed, we have a number of staff that were not born and raised in the United States. They also happen to be fabulous cooks. They have many, many, many questions about our strange foods. All it took was one potluck somewhere in America and the questions began. How is jello a salad? Does every meat need a casing? Where does all that orange dye come from?

We had been threatening to make Deb, native of Great Britain, sample the worst of American heartland cuisine for a long long time. Yessenia, whom we have convinced to stay at her shipping station until labor begins, also needed this Americana inservice. Jayn was born and raised on a farm in Western Pennsylvania and has many a story about unusual jello salads. Her going away party seemed the perfect moment to put on an Americana spread for the edification of all involved.

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Here is Jayn first observing the spread we assembled for her.

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Here is Jayn using her best hand model skills to show off Patricia’s green bean with onion ring casserole. Vicki’s Illinois style deviled eggs are in the background.

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Here are littl’ franks that have been simmering all morning in grape jelly and B-B-Q sauce. Jane Taupier made scratch frosted brownies. These were a little bit too up scale for this do but we suffered through eating the whole plate of them. Note Yessenia’s contribution of roast chicken, also a problem. The chicken was naturally raised, marinated by Yessenia in garlic and rosemary, and the words broasted or fried had never been used in associated with her chicken. Obviously she needs remedial help before her next Americana food effort.

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During one of Jayn’s trips to Virginia we received two cans of potted possum in the mail from her. This was our answer. Note problem food in upper right hand corner. Deb’s contribution to the luncheon was also much too nice. She made amazing scalloped potatoes in one of her husband’s beautiful dishes. Clearly, even after ALL our explanations, she really didn’t get what we were talking about. Maybe next time she will do better and serve us frozen hash browns drizzled in some mixture of sour cream and condensed soup. Really, we tried very hard to offer tips! It was just hard to dumb her down.

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It’s long been a goal to mix Jayn’s favorite junk food snack of pretzels with jello and this lovely does an admirable job with a pretzel crust and then many many layers of jello, marshmallow, cream cheese and whipped topping. It was very popular, even with Deb.

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We felt that Jayn would naturally need some road food for her trip south so we sent her off with a few goodies. It will be good for her to have orange dye # 43 all over herself to remind her of us!

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