A Spring Lunch Bunch Lunch

The Lunch Bunch -- three dear friends who come to lunch at Linderhof once a month.    I have fun deciding upon a type of menu, selecting recipes, putting together a centerpiece, and selecting dishes and linens!

March has been really warm on the prairie an so I decided on a ladies lunch of soup and chicken salad.   A perfect meal for an 80 degree day!

But the day turned out to be a 50 degree day!!!!

A gift was the blue and white damask tablecloth.    It's old with a lovely feel that only well loved and well laundered damask has.  

The table set with my blue and white, of course, a blue linen napkin that's getting a lovely feel for they've been used and laundered a lot since I've gotten them, and Husband Jim's grandmother's cutlery.

It's Lent and the French lamb molds are on the table during Lent -- and with a blue and white table, blue and white flowers in a blue and white "vase"  (a Spode Blue Italian pitcher).

And every time we have company we always place a menu at each place.

Often, when picking up, after the company has left, the menus are gone -- souvenirs of a fun afternoon.

And lunch . . . .

Chutney chicken salad (decorated with a pansy), California asparagus soup (decorated with a parsley leaf because there is parsley in the soup), and a slice of banana bread.

Lemon Dainty for dessert.    An old 1931 recipe that reminded me of a pudding cake except it was more like an angel food and the sauce that was made while the cake baked was wonderful.    A garnish of a few fresh blackberries.

My search for a menu and recipes for this lunch took me to these two cookbooks.

I've had them for a long long time -- one is copyrighted 1980 and the other 1984.    I got the first one on a trip to California and I'm not sure how I acquired the second but I was so fond of the first that I had to have the second!

And I did like them.   I did read them.   I looked at the recipes.    But I never made anything out of them!


I decided that the March lunch would rectify that and so I composed the menu based on the recipes in the book and took the suggestion of serving banana bread with the chicken salad -- which was brilliant!

Everyone liked the chicken salad (for they all adore curry) and were fond of the soup and thought the banana bread was perfect!

But the star of the show was the Lemon Dainty.   Only next time, I think I will make it in individual ramekins -- it will make for a prettier presentation I think.

We sit and chat after lunch with perhaps another cup of coffee or two!    It's a leisurely lunch and no one is in a hurry to get back to the "real world"!    But as they leave, we know that there will be a "next month"!

It's Thursday and I'm sharing my Spring Lunch Bunch Lunch with Susan at Between Naps On The Porch
for Tablescape Thursday.