Recipe Friday: Beach Food

Our flip-flops at the end of our peer from last year.

It's beach time! Well, no it really isn't May is beach time, but my book club pals and I could not work it out in May. There were four graduates from our little group: Baby Great Smile, Baby Cutest Girl in the World, Precious Angel, and QB-One. There were parties to give, gifts to buy, college to get ready for and--well, we just could not make it happen. So now, I am happy to report, they are all safely in their dorm rooms. I am sure of it. As I type, it is after 11 p.m. So they are there. Where else would they be?

Moving on.

So, we delayed our yearly beach trip until September. And why not? It's still hot. The off season has set in. And we can have some football watching fun, that we never get to have in May. So what if it's hurricane season? It will be fine. We have it to a science. Everyone has their job and no one is over worked. Pretty much all we do is sit under our umbrellas until it's time to shower and go to dinner. The rest of our meals, we take at the beach house. I cook breakfast. Someone else cleans up. We know who brings chicken salad. We know who brings pimento cheese. We know who bakes the cookies We know who can't cook and buys the bread and chips. Everybody brings the liquor.

And every year I bring this vegetable spread. It is from the Junior League cookbook that we were all raised on. It's really called vegetable sandwich spread, but I have never known anyone to make a sandwich with it. We eat it on crackers or pile it on top of boiled shrimp. There were no food processors when that book was written, so making it truly was a labor of love back then. Nowadays, I whirl up all the veggies except the tomatoes and the cucumber in the food processor. I tried grating the cucumber with the grating attachment, but don't. You really need those tiny cubes for the cucumber. Even I knew better than to take a shortcut with the tomatoes.

Over the years, I have tried to mess with this. I've added dill, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper. I've substituted red bell pepper for green. It's a mistake. Just make it by the recipe

I will admit that it doesn't sound all that good, but sound means nothing. I run with a discerning brunch and I've been instructed to make a double batch this year.

Vegetable Spread      

2 tomatoes                                                       1 envelope plain gelatin

1 cup celery                                                      ¼ cup cold water

1 small onion                                                    ¼ cup boiling water

1 green bell pepper                                          1 pint Hellmann's mayonnaise

1 cucumber                                                      1 teaspoon salt

Chop all the vegetables finely and drain on paper towels. Soften gelatin

In cold water. Add boiling water. Cool. Fold in mayonnaise and salt. Add

vegetables. Chill