SORRY …ANOTHER TEST AS THE ISSUE PERSISTS

Note: To my regular readers as Ricky Ricardo would say to Lucy: “You have some splaining to do”. Here is the story

Blogs have been few and far between for awhile because of a glitch in my website software. When you design your own website there are bound to be some glitches. Like my father used to say about his carpentry skills: I can do it, but it looks like I did it. I finally broke down and hired a guy in India to help. You have probably have noticed blogs being sent by Jay. Hopefully, the glitches have been fixed and you should be getting more blogs from me soon.

Enjoy!

The best way to eat mussels is to use a mussel as a tweezer.

Try this method once and you will be hooked for life. It just works. Mussels also make a great wine group starter.

Our son Brian and his family love spending time in Westhampton. He spent 6 weeks every summer growing up coming to visit his grandmother at the beach. He has a sizable list of food favorites that he wants to have while he is here. At the top of the list is mussels. Out tradition during summers in Westhampton was that we would take the boat out to an island in the bay that has a healthy bed of mussels. There we would collect a pail full of perfectly sized mussels. There is something about free fresh seafood.

After scrubbing and soaking in water with corn meal to get rid of the grit, I like to prepare mussels two ways with:

• Red sauce (olive oil, garlic, onion, canned tomatoes)
• White sauce (butter, white wine, olive oil, garlic, onion)

Add fresh herbs and a hearty baguette to soak up the sauce and you are in for a treat.

Using one mussel as a tweezer to eat mussels is not something we grew up with. My buddy Lucien who grew up in the south of France is the one that taught us this one. If you ever go to Paris you have try moules frites. Chez Leon along the Champs -Elysees is a great experience. While moules frites is originally from Brussels, the French do a great job. You can get your moules 10 to 20 different ways. No choice is bad.

I like mussels for a group setting because it adds the dimension of sharing. While mussels are increasingly popular at restaurants, they are not everyone’s favorite. Chances are you will have a guest or two that is not a fan, but my bet is that you can get a few converts to the “tweezer” method and have lots of fun with it.

If you enjoyed this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons follow me on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and check out my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs. Published by Morgan James Publishing and available through most channels where books are sold.

Brian at the Westhampton Beer store, another favorite. Talk about a kid in the candy shop

Brian and his son Declan at the Beach

Note: To my regular readers as Ricky Ricardo would say to Lucy: “You have some splaining to do”. Here is the story

Blogs have been few and far between for awhile because of a glitch in my website software. When you design your own website there are bound to be some glitches. Like my father used to say about his carpentry skills: I can do it, but it looks like I did it. I finally broke down and hired a guy in India to help. You have probably have noticed blogs being sent by Jay. Hopefully, the glitches have been fixed and you should be getting more blogs from me soon.

Enjoy!

The best way to eat mussels is to use a mussel as a tweezer.

Try this method once and you will be hooked for life. It just works. Mussels also make a great wine group starter.

Our son Brian and his family love spending time in Westhampton. He spent 6 weeks every summer growing up coming to visit his grandmother at the beach. He has a sizable list of food favorites that he wants to have while he is here. At the top of the list is mussels. Out tradition during summers in Westhampton was that we would take the boat out to an island in the bay that has a healthy bed of mussels. There we would collect a pail full of perfectly sized mussels. There is something about free fresh seafood.

After scrubbing and soaking in water with corn meal to get rid of the grit, I like to prepare mussels two ways with:

• Red sauce (olive oil, garlic, onion, canned tomatoes)
• White sauce (butter, white wine, olive oil, garlic, onion)

Add fresh herbs and a hearty baguette to soak up the sauce and you are in for a treat.

Using one mussel as a tweezer to eat mussels is not something we grew up with. My buddy Lucien who grew up in the south of France is the one that taught us this one. If you ever go to Paris you have try moules frites. Chez Leon along the Champs -Elysees is a great experience. While moules frites is originally from Brussels, the French do a great job. You can get your moules 10 to 20 different ways. No choice is bad.

I like mussels for a group setting because it adds the dimension of sharing. While mussels are increasingly popular at restaurants, they are not everyone’s favorite. Chances are you will have a guest or two that is not a fan, but my bet is that you can get a few converts to the “tweezer” method and have lots of fun with it.

If you enjoyed this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons follow me on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and check out my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs. Published by Morgan James Publishing and available through most channels where books are sold.

Brian at the Westhampton Beer store, another favorite. Talk about a kid in the candy shop

Brian and his son Declan at the Beach

My sister Joan is a cookbook person. As kids growing up, I can remember her coming home from school and poring over a cookbook with a glass of milk. Today she spends her summers on her   island in New York’s Thousand Islands. She still has lots of cookbooks, but like most of us, she gets most of her recipes online. That is why Joan is questioning of the need to keep her collection. My answer was: Of course you need to keep your cookbooks. I don’t think people will be throwing away their family bible simply because they go to the Internet to check out Facebook in the morning. Books, cookbooks in particularly, are part of Joan’s DNA. And, that is a good thing.

Joan and her husband Brian are wonderful hosts. They spend their summers on the St Lawrence River, right on New York border with Canada. Their little island has been in Brian’s family for generations and is a wonderful place to visit, but it isn’t exactly easy to get to. Joan and Brian have been going there for years, but it was only when our daughter moved to Ottawa Canada a few years back, that we  made it there. The pace of life on the river is low key. One can sit on the veranda and stare across the river and see Canada while watching very large ocean going vessels pass. With all the noise in the media about the southern wall with Mexico, one has to wonder where the northern wall will go? LOL.

Joan, Brian, Susan and I were probably our original supper club. We all went to college together In Plattsburgh NY which was also close the Canadian border. Back in the 1970’s there certainly wasn’t any wall. You  didn’t need a passport to get across the border. I don’t think we even had to show an ID. We would drive to Montreal for an evening. My buddy Ron Iles used to claim that the drunker you were, the easier it was to get across the border. His line was: “The Lord protects fools and drunks. That gives us double coverage.”

Back then we didn’t have much money for our supper club dinners. I can remember one late summer meal where I made Zucchini Parmesan with over-ripe squash from Joan and Brian’s garden. Iles, always a wizard with words, quickly began to shout praise for my Seeds Parmesan. Once you got past the larger seeds, the parmesan was pretty good and the price was right for hungry college students.

The menus for our dinners on Joan and Brian’s last summer were a lot closer to Joan’s cookbook standards.

If you enjoyed this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons follow me on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and check out my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs. Published by Morgan James Publishing and available through most channels where books are sold.