Garden of Eden: Beans, Bacon and Butt

I recently had one of the most pleasurable weekends ever. Friends, family, and food – a wonderful combination, and that’s just to start. Put the word great in front of each of these nouns and multiply by some big number. Then you might begin to understand what a great weekend I had.

It was Foodiepalooza and I had a front row seat. It was a weekend at my parent's house, the house where Mark and I grew up. The only thing that could have made it better was if Hubby had been able to come down for the weekend. Alas, work got in the way.

Let me give you the run down of the menu. I will be posting most of the recipes up on my new Recipes page. Check back soon for those.

Green beans and a lesson on how to can them
Pork butt (in massive amounts)
Cole Slaw
Potato Salad
Aunt Fanny's Baked Squash
Lentil Salad
Baked Beans
Deviled eggs
Fresh guacamole and chips
Chess Pie, 5 kinds (regular, chocolate, peanut butter, sweet mango tea, apple butter)
Chocolate Cream Pie
Bacon Moon Pies

I repeat, Bacon Moon Pies. I'll give you a moment to process that.

This all started very organically. A couple of friends had this brilliant idea about learning how to can beans. Enough of us thought that it was an interesting thing to learn and we just decided to get together and do it!

Throughout the weekend 15 people, friends and family, came by or stayed over to learn how to can beans. Everyone had to eat of course and my parents are great cooks, which is how we ended up with half of the menu above. The other half came about through random requests made by someone in the group. Because who could plan a menu like that??

Saturday was the big day. My cousin Teresa was the teacher and she did a great job of showing us how the process works and what is supposed to happen and what's not supposed to happen. The point is to put your veggies in water in a jar and seal the can air-tight so you can open them in winter and eat your fresh veggies. Turns out the pressure cooker didn't work properly this weekend and there's a million and one reasons that could've happened. But our cans did seal themselves, after coming out of the pressure cooker and sitting for several hours. So we each went home with a prized can of beans!

And in the mean time, we had an amazing weekend of great conversations, food and general happiness. We had pork butt, a specialty of my dad's and now my brother Mark's too. They take a pork 'butt', which is really the butt end of a pork shoulder, put the spice mix on and cook it low and slow for most of the day. One of Mark's friends is a self-proclaimed 'occasionally kosher' Jew. So that he could feel less guilty about eating pork butt, we all referred to it as 'chicken butt'. If anyone made the mistake of calling it pork, the rest of the room shouted ‘chicken butt!’ And it somehow never got old. It still makes me smile.

As you can see from the list, we had a smorgasbord of desserts. Anh was responsible for most of the damage. Four chess pies and the bacon moon pies are her fault. It’s why we love her so. She came over that morning laden down with the 4 of the 5 pre-made chess pies (regular, apple butter, sweet mango tea, and peanut butter. Mom made the awesome chocolate chess pie), bacon shortbread (using bacon grease instead of butter, no kidding), bourbon marshmallow fluff (still not joking), caramel (I wonder if any bacon was used?) and chocolate to melt and dip the shortbread sandwiches into. I think my left artery just clogged up thinking about it again. Personally, I justify eating these because the shortbread cookies were small. Therefore, portion control was in place. Nevermind that I had 3 of them in just as many minutes.

My friend La-Verna pointed out that the people in attendance were a smorgasbord as well! People from all kinds of backgrounds. Both sides of my family were represented, which is a smorgasbord in and of itself. My mother is Chinese. My father is from east Tennessee (we call him hillbilly white). So my brother and I are our very own melting pot. Then you had our mix of friends from north and south, they were jewish, catholic, atheist, baptist, they had blond, brunette, black and red hair. Loud people, quiet people, and some of the most interesting senses of humor! In addition to my parents, Mark and me, 5 more people slept at the house. Which meant that the fun lasted through mid-day Sunday as well. We talked about nothing and everything: food (shocker!), politics and the future of this country (not necessarily the same thing), glass blowing, fashion school (go Melissa!), gardening and farming, jobs, making pottery, dogs, retirement, birds, and trapeze school. And I'm sure I'm missing 1,000 other things.

The weekend reinforced what gardening has taught me in a few short weeks. The simple things really are the best. The TV was on occasionally for a couple of people but it was by no means a focal point, which was a welcome break for me, at least. I am a gadget girl through and through. I love getting the latest technology (although I usually have to wait until the price is marked down. Ipad anyone?) and can't imagine ever not having these things. But I've recently felt the need for a slower pace in life. Maybe that's just a result of getting older (not old, just older!). Whatever it is, sitting around the table most of the weekend, just enjoying interesting people and fabulous conversation was a special treat that I will always remember. So although the title of this blog post is all about food, it's really the people that made this post worth talking about.

Below are a bunch of photos of the wonderful people who were part of a great weekend.