The Last Supper

Today on the Chew part of the discussion revolved around what each host would eat for his / her last meal.  Which got me thinking, of course. . .

I would need a buffet because I simply can't choose between these favorites:

The first course would be a seafood snack:  de-shelled lobster tail with drawn butter, de-shelled crab with more drawn butter, and finally boiled shrimp with cocktail sauce.

Lobster tail and lots of butter

The second course would be a cup of creamy rich lobster bisque; however I would forgo the oyster crackers, just to save a bit of room for dessert. 

The third course would be salad -- I'm NOT going to eat European style and hold the salad until after the entree.  Would I have lettuce of any type?  Not on your life.  I'd have deviled eggs and potato salad prepared by -- wait for it because you'll be surprised -- my mom.

Mother's eggs were purist -- a bit of mayonnaise, a dab of golden mustard, a bit of dill and salt & pepper

Mother's potato salad also contained mustard and lots of eggs with onions and celery and good seasonings; I like other kinds but always come back to a mustard base

The palate cleanser would be a small bowl of Hubby's spaghetti -- he does the most wonderful made-from-scratch sauce.

Hubby's spaghetti, when made for me, is a meat sauce topping -- and it's sweet to the taste.

The entree would have to be my grandmother's pot roast dinner -- if she was preparing it, I'd eat whatever she put on the plate -- but there would have to be pot roast from her Therma-well, boiled potatoes, and carrots.  Topping everything would be Granny's gravy -- OMG!  Just for one more taste of that woman's gravy -- you simply can't imagine how good it was -- it was so good we used to make a meal of it with a piece of white bread. 

This is a Chamber's Thermowell Stove -- the Thermowell is the round lid on the back right; the oblong lid on the left was the griddle from which came the best pancakes in the world; the Thermowell cooked the meat while we were all at church

Actually, if I could have all this -- and stuff it all down - I could forgo dessert.  Really.  BUT -- if I still had room I would want to be seated at Grandmother's Christmas table when the specialty desserts created by each woman in the family were passed around:  Mother made suet pudding with real hard sauce (yes, it had suet in it), Grandmother made fondant and mince pie (with more hard sauce), my aunt made a lovely brittle, and I always spent a day producing coconut balls hand dipped in chocolate.

The suet pudding was a recipe from my father's mother; it was boiled in tin cans for hours -- and usually looked just like this but with a lot more hard sauce on it

It's interesting that, except for the seafood dishes (which we didn't really eat being landlocked in the middle of the country), every single one of my favorite dishes comes with family associations -- my grandmother, my mother, my husband.  If a dish is cooked with love you can actually taste it, I think. 

Christmas Eve dinner at Mother's home -- I'm peaking out from the far back but seated next to my beloved grandmother --  Dad is at the head of the table and on his right is his mother of the suet pudding recipes;  this was probably 1951 and I was five

This was a Christmas dinner at my grandmother's house; once again I'm standing next to her, Grandfather is at the head of the table, Mother and Dad are on the right and Great Aunt Frances is taking the photo -- probably 1961.  The only person in any of these pictures still alive is me.