I am so excited I am fully in "can't keep a secret" mode...
...so I figured I'd post about "it" in the hopes that this will help contain my nearly irrepressible excitement. Truth is, I'm always in "can't keep a secret mode". Various members of my family have developed stern measures to keep me from revealing secrets to themselves or others in an untimely manner. But, normally, there's a 10% chance that, without intervention, I can keep a secret. Today, I'm afraid, I need some intervention, so I'm telling the secret here in the hopes that I will not reveal the secret to my mother and spoil the surprise.
    Tonight will be "Champagne Kick Off" night. Serendipitously, the day I called Hospice about the possibility of my mother drinking alcohol in moderate amounts and was told this was fine, provided I'm careful about the circumstances, including her medication, TCM ran Gigi. This isn't one of Mom's or my favorite musicals, it isn't in our film library for a reason, but we both enjoy it now and then if we want to watch something but are stuck in ambivalence. It is particularly appropriate at this time, though, because of the song-and-dance number, "The Night They Invented Champagne", a bubbly presentation delivered by Leslie Caron at her spirited best which is always fun to watch. The movie gave me the idea for tonight's Champagne Kick Off. I'm going to produce a special appetizer dinner, for which I just returned from shopping, which will be served just before above mentioned number begins. It will include appetizers made from all Mom's favorite deli meats and cheeses on one of her favorite types of crackers, saltines. Actually, her absolute favorite crackers are Ritz but I, frankly, forgot about those because I don't like them. Saltines are perfect, though, for all the flavors and colors she's going to experience tonight. There will, as well, be a variety of her favorite pickles, including cocktail onions, garlic stuffed olives, sweet cherry peppers, pepperoncinis and Mrs. Fanning's Bread & Butter pickles (wish we had some of MCS's, but, unfortunately, we're out of those; the aforementioned brand, though, is the brand Mom favored for decades before MCS discovered her Bread & Butter talent). I bought some potato salad which I'll be embellishing with chopped onions, celery, Spanish smoked paprika and dill pickle relish. On a whim, I also purchased a bit of her favorite deli tuna salad to spread on a few crackers. Since I don't drink alcohol anymore (by choice; my only slight appreciation for it in earlier years evaporated with menopause) I also purchased a bottle of sparkling cherry juice, my favorite. This way we'll both have bubbles in our bamboo pattern etched, hollow stemmed crystal champagne flutes (the crystal set of which my mother favored and bought for herself eons ago on Guam), tonight. Although the Hospice nurse mentioned that alcohol and desserts probably shouldn't be mixed, one of my mother's favorite after dinner delights is chocolate covered mints, so I picked up a small bag of Ghiradelli's dark chocolate mint cream filled squares, as well as a package of caramel and raspberry cream filled squares, just for fun. It's simply impossible to have an elegant appetizer dinner without a delicate, sweet finish. Dark chocolate, after all, is good for one's blood pressure, isn't it?
    I can't wait! I can already hear my mother's exclamations throughout the evening: "Oh my! This is wonderful!" "Mmmm...delicious! When did you do this?!?" "I feel like a Queen!" "This is how we should eat every night!"
    Chances are, we'll eat like this much more frequently than we have.
    Well, I've already delayed my mother's 12-hour-sleep-mark awakening by 30 minutes, just so I could blabber all this now so I don't spoil the surprise before I present it.
    Time to start the count down.
    Later.
- posted by Gail Rae @ 13:30   email  this post