Photo by Andrea Bossy, with Andrea’s camera.
This was what it boiled down to, after (mumble) bottles of wine and blueberry-vodka shooters — see the young minx with glasses in the front row? in front of the supermodel with glasses? they were her idea — and lo, it was fun. Suddenly it was after midnight and I had to pack my half-eaten tiramisu and go home, and it’s just as well, because after I left, someone went out for White Castles. White Castles, on top of a blueberry-vodka shooter, would have been lethal. And then I would have missed the very picturesque car fire I saw from the freeway, yet another area of urban excellence in which Detroit leads the nation. Good thing it was happening near a tricky interchange, or I might have stopped for a photo.
The company was great, and I’ll be adding links to the b’roll as soon as I sort them all out. The face to my left, Michelle, said she wanted to figure out a way she could spend all her time sewing. She said she made quilts. I’m thinking, OK, very nice, quilts, sewing, yes yes yes. And then I saw some of her quilts, and thought, I sat next to an artist all night long and didn’t know it.
Anyhoo, all thanks to Andrea, our hostess (first face to Bossy’s right), and just because food this good should be spread around, here’s her recipe for…
Fabulous Salmon Spread
(recipe comes from the Complete Book of Hors d’oeuvre, which is out of print)1 T. butter to grease pan
4 oz. sesame crackers
one stick (1/2 cup) of butter, less whatever you used to grease pan, melted
2.5 pounds cream cheese, at room temperature
4 eggs
1/2 pound smoked salmon (not lox but the smoked fillets that come vacuum sealed)
1/2 cup finely chopped scallions (including some green)
1/4 cup minced fresh dillPreheat oven to 350 degrees. Use approximately 1 T. of butter to thoroughly coat the bottom and sides of a 9″ springform pan. Crush crackers and dust some up the sides of the pan. Then mix the rest of the crackers with the melted butter, and press into bottom of the pan.
Using an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and eggs thoroughly until completely mixed and smooth. (It’s okay if there are a few tiny bumps here and there.) Crumble salmon (without skin) into the cheese mixture, and add scallions and dill. Beat again until mixture becomes lighter and fluffy. Pour into pan, spreading and smoothing with a spatula.
Bake 5 minutes at 350, then reduce heat to 325 and bake 50 minutes more. If you don’t trust your oven, check for doneness: cake should be just set in the middle. If you’ve opened the oven to check, give it a couple of minutes to heat back up to temperature again, and then turn it off. Do NOT open door. Allow salmon fabulosity to cool completely in oven with door closed. This will take several hours.
If serving the same day, do not refrigerate, as this tastes much better at room temperature. It tastes even better the next day, however, and keeps well for several days, so feel free to make ahead and refrigerate once it’s cooled. (Cover tightly with plastic wrap first.) Just bring up to room temp before serving. Serve with lots of crusty bread for spreading.
This makes a large quantity, suitable for a party. On a buffet table with lots of other foods, this quantity would safely cover 30 people. It’s quite rich and goes further than you’d think.
Also, thanks, Saturn, for being Bossy’s corporate sponsor.
MommyTime said on April 26, 2008 at 2:41 pm
It was great to have you over last night, and I’m so delighted I got to meet you! In fairness and full-disclosure, I should admit that the photo is not exactly by me. It’s by my camera, courtesy of Bossy’s long arms and trigger finger. It’s unclear to me who gets the photo credit when no one is looking through the viewfinder… hmmm… a problem worth pondering over another blueberry shooter, I think.
In White Castles vs. Car Fire, I’m not sure which wins for most excessive end to the evening.
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nancy said on April 26, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Given my body’s most common reaction to White Castles, I could see where they could actually cause a car fire.
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brian stouder said on April 26, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Looks like big fun!! Couldn’t figure out why Bossy always strikes me as serious looking (like a doctor, making rounds) until this picture….and then the light bulb turned on, and I went back and looked at others – and sure enough! – I’ve never seen her teeth; conciously or not, when she appears in pictures, we don’t get to see them.
Much as the art of the strip-tease is what you don’t show, now I wanna see teeth, baby!
Leaving that aside – the whole concept of the road trip and Saturn and all the rest is very cool, indeed (have they lent her a SKY yet?)
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Jolene said on April 26, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Are Bossy’s friends all girls? I didn’t look back at all the pictures on her site, but it seems like that’s what I’ve been seeing.
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Nancy said on April 26, 2008 at 7:10 pm
A fun time indeed. It was good to have met you, another Nancy. Did we sound a bit too callous to the big “D”? lol
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basset said on April 26, 2008 at 8:51 pm
I’ve been told, and it could be true, that Nashville’s the only city which has both White Castles and Krystals.
Meanwhile, Wichita… the city where White Castle started… doesn’t have any, or at least they didn’t when we lived there in the Eighties.
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nancy said on April 26, 2008 at 9:22 pm
I thought Whities was yet another Columbus thing. Their corporate HQ was there, anyway.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 26, 2008 at 10:19 pm
There’s a frightening recipe somewhere in this house for breakfast casserole made out of . . . sliders. With eggs and stuff poured over a layer of gut-bombs, and baked.
I’ve never had the nerve to actually make the recipe — kind of like the Siege Perilous. Intriguing to have in the front hall, but never to be sat upon.
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basset said on April 27, 2008 at 1:16 am
dunno what happened after White Castle got started, but the original store was on West Douglas in Wichita. might still be standing, it was when we lived there 83-85 but it may not have been a burger place, memory is unclear. the local burger at the time was a “Nu-Way,” a midwestern “loose meat” sandwich – essentially a sloppy joe with no sauce.
Krystal is pretty much like a southern White Castle. they’re based in Chattanooga… was out riding around one night with a pilot friend as he built hours and we pulled into ‘Nooga pretty late, I saw a Krystal sign and thought “great, now we can get something to eat.”
turned out it was where they kept their damn airplanes. supper had to wait till we got home.
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basset said on April 27, 2008 at 2:05 am
>>Couldn’t figure out why Bossy always strikes me as serious looking (like a doctor, making rounds)
easy. Bossy is not there to have a good time, be your friend, or look attractive in pictures. Bossy is there to sell Saturns. Tough job in these times, if anything she is not serious enough.
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Dexter said on April 27, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Best car salesperson , all-time:
Dinah Shore. “See the U.S.A. \ In your CHEVrolet!!!”
Dinah sings
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Dexter said on April 27, 2008 at 1:38 pm
…and worst, at least in my view. (Even though I did actually buy one!)
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MIQuilter said on April 27, 2008 at 2:17 pm
You are too kind to me 🙂 Thank you for helping to make such a wonderful evening here in Detroit!!
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MarkH said on April 27, 2008 at 3:05 pm
All y’all are pretty hot stuff, I’d say. Nice group; nice shot.
Dexter, watching Ricardo is still a hoot, bad as it is, but even worse IMHO was a ’73 Chrysler commercial where the Chairman himself was hawking New Yorkers. An experienced broadcast commercial producer, my cousin was responsible for that one. Sinatra volunteered to help fellow paisano Iacocca during troubled times, and as Kirk said, you don’t say “no”. I think it ran all of two weeks.
I tried to find it on You Tube to no avail.
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Dexter said on April 27, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Car loyalities: a great thesis topic. Dearborn is FORD COUNTRY.
Many old time GM and Ford families won’t allow a competitor’s car in their driveway. In 1980 I attended a UAW summer school at Indiana U and an instructor told of how he could barely contain his desire to run any foreign car off the road…and Vincent Chin was murdered because Chrysler employees let hatred of Asians cloud their humanity.
“Buy American” was the UAW chant until it was OK to buy NUMMI products after GM and Toyota joined forces.
Big cars, little cars, pickups and vans all have their advocates and haters alike.
On a blog I frequent a smartass New Yorker was trashing a Texan because Tex had a pickup truck. The New Yorker was a straphanger, the Texan did have a daily Amtrak pass by twenty miles from his house, which was real handy to go buy a sack of groceries …some people are so over-zealous about other peoples’ carbon footprints that they don’t realize the other’s life-situation. Would I take an interurban train to Toledo instead of a gas-sucking minivan? Sure I would! However, someone decided steel-on-rubber automobiles were the answer and tore up the tracks, and I’d need a really strong time machine to get back to interurban train days.
Yes, lots of talk about reducing car trips to the stores , but people are still driving a lot more than they need to. My wife vows to not give in —to keep driving as much as ever. I have been using a bike for grocery shopping for years, I have a bike with a huge basket that will hold two paper grocery bags, but of course Wal*Mart drove the local market out of business. It’s a hard world.
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Dexter said on April 27, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Here’s some info on NUMMI.
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basset said on April 28, 2008 at 12:11 am
Jeff, your assignment for today is to find and post the slider casserole recipe.
(I’ll see your sliders and raise them an Elvis “Fool’s Gold Loaf” recipe… this is the one with the hollowed-out French bread and a pound of burned bacon…)
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Dorothy said on April 28, 2008 at 7:36 am
Best car buying experience I ever had was when I bought a Saturn in Cincinnati, May 2002. We’re probably going to buy a Saturn Vue in about 18 months, once we pay off our daughter’s car. We need room for two dogs in the back of a vehicle (we’re adopting a dog that belongs to our former neighbors in SC because they are moving to LA.)
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mwg said on April 28, 2008 at 9:46 am
Thanks to pure, unadulterated nepotism, my summer job while I was in college in the eighties was as a security guard for Chrysler. Ensuring that people parked in the appropriate portion of the parking lot for their make of car and status as an employee was an appallingly large part of the job.
Employees with Chryslers parked in a lot at the front, while employees with domestic non-Chrysler cars parked a little further out. Employees with imports parked in the back. Executives (I usually worked at the old headquarters in Highland Park) typically had special parking spaces just outside the buildings where they worked. They also treated per diem employees (contractors) differently, although nowadays I don’t remember how.
I assume all of that changed when they moved to Auburn Hills. It was obviously already underway when I was there. For instance, my pay as a summer worker was cut nearly in half between the second and third summers I worked there, which should tell you that I was ridiculously overpaid the first two summers.
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Just Juli said on April 29, 2008 at 8:50 am
Nancy –
It was so nice to meet you too! And the tiramisu you brought was fabulous.
You should definitely post that recipe as well!
~julianne
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