Tonight was Fun Sink's dinner party at the Glenview, with the California cousins (who were delightful, by the way). She made a few hors d'oeuvres for once, but no one ate them because no one wanted to be judged for eating them. Anyway, my little foodie E went to town on the cheese and crackers. It clearly was some sort of cheese spread with chunks of cucumbers and dill. I prayed she was not going to try to call it benedictine, but later Fun Sink announced to her California cousins that benedictine was made of "cucumber, cream cheese, onions, and dill." It wasn't even green.
Now, I love some dill, but putting dill in benedictine is just plain unholy. Have you ever heard of such sacrilege? Also, the fact that it wasn't green really bothers me. I'm all about being healthy and avoiding artificial colors and all that b.s., but there's something so midcentury fabulous about a neon green tea sandwich. Those were the good old days, when no one gave a sh!t about their health. Now, what she made wasn't bad, but it wasn't benedictine. Also, my grandmother ate benedictine sandwiches at Miss Jenny Benedict's tea room while Fun Sink's ancestors were huddling in their huts in Poland, so she should have come to me with all her benedictine questions, because she is clearly confused.
Also, she made the cheese grits from the cooking class we were in together, but she somehow made them using no dairy. And I have to give her credit, because I could not tell the difference. Those grits were beyond amazing, and they are a credit to Fun Sink's impressive culinary abilities.
I didn't think twice about the grits being there. Ninety-eight percent of the people at that dinner didn't care about the kosher rules, so I figured since Fun Sink was cooking in the Glenview kitchen instead of her own, and since she was serving tenderloin (which isn't a kosher cut) as well as salmon (which anyone who wanted to keep kosher could eat with the grits) that she was just relaxing the rules a little bit and letting everyone pick and choose what he or she wanted. Which is what a normal hostess would do, especially in someone else's kitchen that makes no pretenses about being kosher. Especially while serving tenderloin, which she would never fix in her own kitchen.
When she told me the grits didn't have any dairy, I told her how great they were and then I mentioned that I really thought they did have dairy and maybe she was relaxing the rules since she wasn't cooking at home. I was trying to give her a well-deserved compliment. She was all, "Oh no! I'd never do that!"
Excuse me for thinking she was halfway normal for a minute. Or that she was the kind of hostess who'd let her guests make decisions about what they want to eat or not eat. Because it's one thing for Fun Sink to observe the rules in her own house, but it seems to me that when it's not her house and she's being so hardcore, she's sort of forcing her belief system on guests who are perfectly capable of following the kosher rules if they want to, or not following them if they don't want to. I'm not sure...I can see both ways, but I don't think it would harm anything to leave it up to the guests to decide what they wanted to eat with what, just this once. But Fun Sink would never do that. I'd hate for the California cousins (who are laid back, normal, and awesome) to think she was anything other than the consummate uptight Jewish housewife with a thousand tiny rules to observe and a huge martyr complex.
No comments:
Post a Comment