The Green Spoon: Tuesday Supper Club: St. Patty's Feast

With little exception, every Tuesday for the past two years I've joined my grandparents for dinner at their house, for what we've come to call Tuesday Supper Club. It's invite-only for the generation of grands-- granddaughters, grandnieces--so parents are never there. We grands are always encouraged to bring friends, roommates, boyfriends, and the like. The only rule my Grandma has is that you cannot bring someone you met the night before. "Two nights prior is fine," however.

My Grandma is an extraordinary cook, my grandfather a true wine lover, and both are incredible storytellers. Each Tuesday feast begins with a strong pour of either Edna Valley Chardonnay or an Italian Sangiovese (my Grandfather's go-to starter favorites). Over an appetizer, we get an introduction to the meal we will be eating and the story behind where it came from. We catch up on our weeks and then head to the dining room to eat. The conversation then shifts to stories from decades we didn't know with words that we don't use anymore: Punch boards, wing-walkers, and murder boards, "Say what?! Grandad?"

On a really special night, we'll get my Granddad to bring out the model drones he designed in the 60's. "Tell us something classified, come on..." and he'll just chuckle and continue on about the training program for pilots and how impossible it was to try and knock one of these bad boys out of the air. We'll continue to drink wine, and needle for the juicy details of their lives, the parts that our own parents could never really pass on in the same light. Just as we begin to feel the relaxing post-feast/wine lull set in, my Grandma will sneak out and come back with a homemade dessert. Have I mentioned her baking is extraordinary? Over Bananas Foster, chocolate cake, or strawberry tarts, we'll finish off the last of the wine, and wrap up another meeting of the Tuesday Supper Club.

I've never blogged about Tuesday Supper Club before. I'm not sure why, but I suspect it's because I treasure the break from anything online when I'm there. It's the three hours of my week that I slip into their world, and walk away completely rejuvenated. I've never really been able to put into words or images quite what it's like to sit around the table with two of the most incredible souls.

Last night, however, my Grandma went above and beyond with an Irish Feast that changed my feelings on blogging about this. Exact recipes from her dinner while eating at Ballyhoe in Ireland in the late 80's...we looked, the pictures in the recipe book she brought back were exactly what these look like. Grandad opened some very special bottles of wine, and all four of us grands (myself, Devon, Kiki and Meggie) just about died when we tried Grasshopper Pie for the first time.

"I haven't made this recipe for a good 30 years," my Grandma divulged, "but I needed something green"...It was divine.

Irish Salad with mixed greens, tomatoes, hard boiled egg, beets, and a mustard cream dressing.

Lamb Stew with potatoes, onions, carrots and peas.

Grasshopper Pie. The whipped and frozen marshmallow in this frozen treat was delightfully light and fluffy and I totally ate half of Kiki's.