My first social gathering of the summer--a reunion of two old friends (like 89 years old!) celebrating the vaccinated life! It was supposed to be a porch party but we had a storm come through followed by a freak cold spell, so we ate inside. Luckily my dining room opens up onto the porch through a set of French doors so it was easy to transition.

As some of you know, I was trying to parse a menu using some of what I had around and wouldn't normally use in party quantities--a huge ham in the freezer from Easter, some puff pastry cups, strawberries and asparagus in season . . . Well here's how it turned out.

I tried making ham salad from the ham, and even with rinsing (although not extended soaking) it was super salty. So salty I could use it as a condiment to salt other dishes, so salty it gave me a stomach ache and I only had one sandwich with it. So I decided the ham was out, just too much bother. Not saying I won't soak it some other time, but not this time.

I got some trial strawberries for Father's Day shortcake and decided I would go back for more if they were any good. They were horrible, most were rotten, they put the nice ones on top, and they were expensive. No good farm fresh strawberries to be had around me right now. I think it is going to be a bad year for them. They don't like a lot of cold and wet followed by baking hot . . . Luckily I had pre-purchased a delicious strawberry-rhubarb pie from a local bakery. They are as good if not better than mine. I decided to go with it for dessert. That sort of organized the rest of the menu. With pie for dessert, I didn't want to do asparagus quiche or something similarly crusty for the main course.

I ended up going with Mtn's marinated beet and asparagus salad, even splurged for the fancy golden beets. Then a seafood salad from Anna Del Conte's Antipasti cookbook that I had been wanting to try. That was a total splurge on shrimp, scallops and barramundi for the fish. I could not find any calamari, sadly. Then store bought hummus and pita chips, plus ice tea and store bought bottle of sangria as an option. We later made coffee with dessert, which I hadn't planned on due to it being so hot and humid prior to that day, but it was easy enough to do it.

Unfortunately, my Dad's friend's daughter who brought her Mom for the visit, was allergic to seafood!! But she was OK with the other salad, which had queso blanco cheese on it, plus the hummus and dessert. She said she really didn't mind because they had been eating a lot of heavy meals and the salad was a welcome change. Still, that was kind of a bummer because now I have a lot of the salad left over. We don't normally eat rich seafood like that. Everyone else had some though.

All in all it was good, but cooking low salt has its challenges. Everything tasted fresh and delicious with fresh vegetables and herbs, but sadly a little bland without the salt. Looked gorgeous though, photos below. I didn't take a photo of the pie since I didn't make it. Plus I didn't want to be one of those folks posing photos the whole time during the meal. I used the queso blanco for the salad instead of the ricotta for ease of serving to a crowd, our dining room is small and cramped right now. I bought some ricotta though, so will be eating it with the leftovers.