The Best Kind Of Friends

There is nothing like having good friends. Good friends who've known you for a long time. A couple of these friends hosted a bridal brunch recently. There were two quiches left over, along with an extra loaf of zucchini bread. "Come on! Let's finish up the quiche." That's the kind of invitation that goes only goes out to really good friends. And five of us gathered around the table to enjoy this feast.

I do wish I had made a photo of the plate. It was as beautiful as the original brunch plate. And every bit as delicious. These ladies all are fabulous cooks. And I was happy to get a chance to enjoy the bounty. Their menu was ham and broccoli quiche, fruit salad "boats" and zucchini bread. The plate was colorful with the perfect variety of textures. Every morsel was scrumptious.

Two small romaine leaves were fitted together to make a "boat" to hold the fruit. The assorted fresh fruit that filled the boats was diced and then sprinkled with pomegranate seeds. All those colors! Again. I should have made a photo. But I was starving and didn't think about it until after we finished.

Lemon Daffodil Dessert

Joanne said, "I can make you another dessert plate. Then you can take a picture of that."  Of course I said yes. Then  I took that extra plate home for Daddy-O. He loves that all of my friends are good cooks.

Out of curiosity I googled "lemon daffodil dessert." Oh my goodness. There are several ways to make this. There are lemon daffodils cakes, too. But it looked like most of the recipes are from three or four decades ago. It was interesting that most of them called for "commercial" angel food cake. Makes me think there was one original recipe that got passed all over the south. They all used that word "commercial." I think I would have said "bought." 

This version is from one of those community cookbooks that has the best recipes. And you can look at this page and tell it's a favorite cookbook. I don't have this one in my collection (it belongs to Joanne) but I'm curious to know what the rest of their menu was. 

Old cookbooks often are vague with their instructions. *New cooks...know that everything here is fine to eat as is, so you can vary the amounts if you want to. Or need to.* Here is the lemon dessert the way Joanne makes it.

LEMON DAFFODIL DESSERT

Juice of 4 lemons

1/2 cup sugar

1 (14-oz) can condensed milk, such as Eagle Brand

most of a large container of Cool Whip

purchased angel food cake, enough to cover bottom of pan

Combine juice, sugar, milk. Fold in Cool Whip. Tear cake into small pieces and cover the bottom of a 9x13-inch pan. Pour lemon mixture over cake pieces and mix together a little. Save enough Cool Whip mixture to spread over the top to make it smooth. Cover and chill for 24 hours before serving. 

And now you want to know about that cute dish towel at the top? Some of these ladies had made a trip to the mountains to buy apples last week while I was away. I couldn't go with them but they bought me a treat.Yep. Friends. The good kind.

PS....We have a house full of grandbabies all week, so no new blog posts until they head home. And I recuperate.