The Girl in the Hat Goes on a Picnic

The laughing, dressed in a fresh white linen dress, joins her friends for a picnic in the mountains. She puts on her favorite straw hat over her long brown braid. The terrain is rugged, especially for a lady outfitted as a lady. The men are willing to help a young lady across the stream.

Part of being the only girl in a small family is inheriting the family history. These are pictures from my grandfather's photo album, snapshots from the 19-teens when he left Ohio and toured the West. The family thinks the pictures were made in Colorado. I was so enamored of the girl in the hat that since I first posted this story in 2010, I've made her image my avatar.

I wish I knew who the girl was - she has such a fresh face. White linen dress, big black bow, face framed by a floppy straw hat. I imagine she has a long brown braid under the hat. The pictures are from a series taken on a picnic in the mountains and these are the most interesting - which gentleman will carry the pretty girl across the river?

Imagining this grand day, I realize the romance factor has dwindled from my picnics. These days, Clark's sandals and a clean t-shirt and shorts are the order of the day. I like my straw hat, but rely on sunscreen to shield my face because I don't like hat hair.

My Picnic Menu

Pimento Cheese on Crackers

Ham Wraps with Spinach, Cream Cheese and Chives and Red Pepper Slices

Fresh Georgia Watermelon Slices

And brownies, always brownies. These are luscious, fudgy brownies, made rich with cream cheese. I intended to make a cream cheese ribbon through the chocolatey cake, but ended up stirring the cream cheese into the batter for an extra-rich brownie. You need to walk an extra mile to burn off these calories, but it's well worth it. After all, you're in your Clark's and not high-button boots. But if a gentleman offers to carry you across the river, well I wouldn't say no.

Pimento cheese. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books.

Pimento Cheese

This is a boilerplate pimento cheese. There are lots of uptown recipes, and I've bookmarked Bellwether Vance's pimento cheese to try (she also has the ultimate minner cheese story).

8 ounces sharp Cheddar cheese
1 cup mayonnaise, approximately, (I've never bothered to measure)
Pinch of salt
2 tablespoons chopped pimentos

1. Shred Cheddar cheese on the coarse side of a hand grater or in a food processor.
2. In a bowl, stir together cheese and enough mayonnaise to bind. Add salt and pimentos. Serve with crackers or on squishy white bread.

Brownies with cream cheese. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Fudgy Icebox Brownies

These brownies came about from a failed attempt to make a cream cheese marble swirl in my regular brownie. I made both batters, swirled them to perfect marbling and placed the pan in the oven. Then I saw the bowl of three eggs, waiting to be used in the brownie batter. Ooops! Out of the oven, batter dumped in a bowl, eggs whisked in to the now-combined cream cheese and brownie batter. The resulting brownies are super-rich due to the cream cheese, and as good as they are warm, they are divine cold, so place them the bottom of the cooler, and finish off the picnic on a high note.

2 sticks unsalted butter, melted

2 cups granulated sugar

4 ounces cream cheese, softened

4 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 cup natural cocoa powder (I use Hershey's)

2/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter a 9-inch-square metal baking pan.

2. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Off the heat, stir in sugar, then the cream cheese, followed by the eggs and vanilla. Slowly stir in the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt, until the batter is smooth and free of lumps.

3. Spread the batter into the prepared pan. Bake until a toothpick or a skewer inserted 3/4 inch into the center of the brownies comes out with just a few moist clumps clinging to it, about 40 minutes. Let the brownies cool completely in the pan on a rack.

4. Cut into squares. Store the brownies in the refrigerator in a covered container.

Watermelon slices. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Watermelon. What can I say? It's Georgia in June and the watermelons are sweet and available at every fruit and vegetable stand by the side of the road. Chill the melon in the fridge, then carve into chunks and what my family calls "pie slices"- with a handy rind handle for kids to hold.

Text and images © 2013, Lucy Mercer.

This story is a re-post for #LetsLunch, a monthly Twitter party for food bloggers all over the world. 

This month's theme is Too Hot to Cook. Thanks Grace Hwang Lynch of HapaMama for hosting 

this month's party! Check back here for links to this month's stories and recipes!

Grace's Mung Bean Shaved Ice at HapaMama
Monica’s Peanut Salad at A Life of Spice
Lisa’s Aperol Spritz Granita at Monday Morning Cooking Club
Cheryl’s Mango-Key Lime Pie at A Tiger in the Kitchen
Linda’s Escape from San Francisco Picnic at Spicebox Travels
Pat’s Almost No-Cook Rice at The Asian Grandmother’s Cookbook
Linda’s Coconut Creamsicle Sodas at Free Range Cookies
Emma’s Cheese Plate at Dreaming of Pots and Pans
Anne Marie’s Lettuce Sandwiches at Sandwich Surprise

The Laughing Girl Goes on a Picnic

The laughing girl, dressed in a fresh white linen dress, joins her friends for a picnic in the mountains. She puts on her favorite straw hat over her long brown braid. The terrain is rugged, especially for a lady outfitted as a lady. The men are willing to help a young lady across the stream.

Part of being the only girl in a small family is inheriting the family history. These are pictures from my grandfather's photo album, snapshots from the 19-teens when he left Ohio and toured the West. The family thinks the pictures were made in Colorado.

I wish I knew who the girl was - she has such a fresh face. White linen dress, big black bow, face framed by a floppy straw hat. I imagine she has a long brown braid under the hat. The pictures are from a picnic in the mountains and these are the most interesting - which gentleman will carry the pretty girl across the river?
Imagining this grand day, I realize the romance factor has dwindled from my picnics. These days, Clark's sandals and a clean t-shirt and shorts are the order of the day. I like my straw hat, but rely on sunscreen to shield my face because I don't like hat hair.

My Picnic Menu

Pimento Cheese on Crackers

Ham Wraps with Spinach, Cream Cheese and Chives and Red Pepper Slices

Fresh Georgia Watermelon Slices

And brownies, always brownies. These are luscious, fudgy brownies, made rich with cream cheese. I intended to make a cream cheese ribbon through the chocolately cake, but ended up stirring the cream cheese into the batter for an extra-rich brownie. You need to walk an extra mile to burn off these calories, but it's well worth it. After all, you're in your Clark's and not high-button boots.

Pimento cheese. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books.

Pimento Cheese

This is a boilerplate pimento cheese. There are lots of uptown recipes, and I've bookmarked Bellwether Vance's pimento cheese to try (she also has the ultimate minner cheese story).

8 ounces sharp Cheddar cheese
1 cup mayonnaise, approximately, (I've never bothered to measure)
Pinch of salt
2 tablespoons chopped pimentos
1. Shred Cheddar cheese on the coarse side of a hand grater or in a food processor.
2. In a bowl, stir together cheese and enough mayonnaise to bind. Add salt and pimentos. Serve with crackers or on squishy white bread.

Brownies with cream cheese. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Fudgy Icebox Brownies

These brownies came about from a failed attempt to make a cream cheese marble swirl in my regular brownie. I made both batters, swirled them to perfect marbling and placed the pan in the oven. Then I saw the bowl of three eggs, waiting to be used in the brownie batter. Ooops! Out of the oven, batter dumped in a bowl, eggs whisked in to the now-combined cream cheese and brownie batter. The resulting brownies are super-rich due to the cream cheese, and as good as they are warm, they are divine cold, so place them the bottom of the cooler, and finish off the picnic on a high note.

2 sticks unsalted butter, melted

2 cups granulated sugar

4 ounces cream cheese, softened

4 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 cup natural cocoa powder (I use Hershey's)

2/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter a 9-inch-square metal baking pan.

2. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Off the heat, stir in sugar, then the cream cheese, followed by the eggs and vanilla. Slowly stir in the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt, until the batter is smooth and free of lumps.

3. Spread the batter into the prepared pan. Bake until a toothpick or a skewer inserted 3/4 inch into the center of the brownies comes out with just a few moist clumps clinging to it, about 40 minutes. Let the brownies cool completely in the pan on a rack.

4. Cut into squares. Store the brownies in the refrigerator in a covered container.

Watermelon slices. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Watermelon. What can I say? It's Georgia in June and the watermelons are sweet and available at every fruit and vegetable stand by the side of the road. Chill the melon in the fridge, then carve into chunks and what my family calls "pie slices"- with a handy rind handle for kids to hold.

Text & images © 2010, Lucy Mercer.

P is for Potluck (and Peas!)

7 Layer Salad by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Contrary to what many believe, May, not December, is the busiest month for my colleagues in the mommy business. You may think that December, with class parties and church happenings, would be the craziest time of the year, but the end of the school year seems to slip on us and before we know it, we’re slammed with breathlessly important occasions such as Teacher Appreciation Days and Fifth Grade Graduation and the End of Year Soccer/Beta Club/Band Party. All of these occasions demand food and eventually folks tire of pizza and that’s where the mommies step up and bring a covered dish.

The queen of the covered dish is my friend Julie. We’ve been friends since college, and twenty years after rooming together at UGA, we still seemed stunned that we spend our lives in carpool lines and not behind desks. Julie is a first-class cook and is always the first to volunteer to bring a dish to an event. In our weekly call from the carpool line, she told me that her latest success was a layered salad. If you're not familiar with the layered salad, it's the kind of recipe that Paula Deen has built an empire around. It's a potluck staple, a green salad layered in a pretty glass bowl with green peas, onions, bacon and cheese, then topped with a creamy mayonnaise dressing.

“It was a big hit,” she said. It kind of surprised her, but “you know, nobody cooks anymore. They eat in restaurants or if they cook, they open a box first.” We’ve decided that we’re the last of the casserole queens, the ones who cook from scratch and carry a dish to every family, church and school gathering. I suppose layered salad is kind of a cold casserole, with the base of lettuce substituting for pasta or rice, and the requisite green vegetable, peas in the middle. Topped with cheese, and mayonnaise subbing for the cream of whatever soup, and you see what I mean.

Julie’s recipe is from her church cookbook, and it’s from Miss Ethel Arrington, a woman who never married and played the organ at the church. Miss Ethel Arrington specified a can of LeSueur Peas in her layered salad, and Julie doesn’t substitute. The silver can is a guilty pleasure for me - I can’t think of LeSueur ("Very Young Small Early") peas without memories of my Grandmother Kitty, with her Montgomery, Alabama, accent, saying “LeSu-wuuuuu-er peas.” She served them at all family gatherings, convinced that the only green vegetable that her many grandchildren would eat is LeSueur brand peas. The menu would include a cooked ham, potato salad with and without celery (another story for another time), heated canned peas, blueberry Jell-O salad (the kind with the cream cheese topping) and, if we were lucky, her homemade itty-bitty biscuits.

While I keep a can of LeSueur peas in the pantry, I'm more likely to use frozen English peas when I cook. Peas are the only vegetable that comes to mind that is nearly as good frozen as fresh. It's a frozen pantry staple for me - a handful of peas thrown into a stir fry or added at the last minute to beef stew. Frozen peas are a kitchen workhorse, completing the sacred triumverate in a meat and potato meal, or adding their sweet mellow selves to a potluck dish. In a pinch, the bag of frozen peas makes a handy ice pack for boo-boos. (At the very least, it will get a giggle from your child.)

My layered salad is adapted from Allrecipes.com, perhaps the church cookbook of the internet age. If you want to be true to Miss Ethel Arrington and my grandmother, use two cans of LeSueur peas, drained, instead of the frozen, thawed, English peas. Peas are a good choice for the layered salad, between the sharp onion and crunchy lettuce, creamy mayonnaise dressing and salty bacon, the emerald spheres make pleasant, sweet pops in your mouth.

7 layer salad. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Sweet Pea Seven-Layered Salad

1 lb. bacon, cooked, crumbled, drained

1 head of iceberg lettuce, chopped

1 bunch green onions, all of white and some green, chopped fine

1 (12 oz.) package frozen green peas, thawed

1 ½ cups shredded Cheddar cheese

1 cup chopped cauliflower

1 ¼ cups mayonnaise

2 tablespoons sugar

4 perfectly cooked hard-boiled eggs, peeled and diced

A handful of wasabi peas, optional

1. In a small bowl, stir together mayonnaise and sugar and let rest while you assemble the salad.

2. Use a large, clear glass bowl, if you have one, but any large, deep bowl will do. Place the lettuce in the bottom of the bowl and top with a layer of onion, then follow with peas, shredded cheese and cauliflower. Spread mayonnaise mixture on top of salad. Sprinkle bacon and egg on top. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

3. If you want a little kick to your layered salad, add my favorite crunchy/spicy snack - wasabi peas across the top of individual servings.

© 2010, Lucy Mercer.