bunny melt

[cellio]

This afternoon we joined ralphmelton, lorimelton, and several others for the by-now-traditional post-Easter bunny melt and high tea. We started with high tea, deferring the bunnies until later, and almost goofed: people were pretty full come slaughter time, but we proceeded anyway and were rewarded with a yummy fondue.

Lori made little tuna-salad sandwiches that were tastier than typical for tuna salad; the secret was that she used one of the spiced tuna fillets that come in foil packets, instead of canned tuna. That worked well! Half of the devilled eggs were nicely zippy; Ralph color-coded them, sprinkling paprika on the ones that had chipotles in them. There were many tasty baked goods, including cherry scones, English shortbread, and orange-flavored tartlets.

They had a nice black tea that was under-specified on the label; it was a black English tea (loose leaves, not bags), but beyond that, shrug. There were other teas too, but I liked this one so I stuck with it.

Before sacrificing the bunnies to the fondue pot it is customary to say a few words. Dani got the best laugh with something like "we dedicate to a higher purpose this bunny that wasn't good enough to be sold at full price". :-) Ralph told of a past bunny melt where a friend who wasn't there this year had blindfolded one of the bunnies before dealing the death blow with a larger-than-needed knife. The fondue is nice, but much of the fun of the bunny melt comes in the, err, execution.

It was a lovely afternoon during which we succeeded in keeping Louie (the most ambitioous of their cats) out of the food while chatting with friends and meeting a new co-worker of Ralph's. Bunny melts may only come once a year, but maybe we should have tea more often. (Maybe we'll host one and try to keep Erik out of the food. :-) )

Comments

[indigodove.livejournal.com]

Thank you! It was great to see both of you. :-)

It was Starkist smoked tuna (hickory smoked?). This is my new favorite tuna -- I discovered it in January. A great thing about it is that the taste of it plain is pretty good, so I find myself wanting less mayo with it so as not to mask the smoke flavor.

Louie was zonked on our bed for most of the afternoon. I count this a blessing!

[cellio]

It was funny -- once things got underway he disappeared, but while you were finishing up the food prep and we were putting things on the table, he was quite attentive. I figured once he knew there was food involved he'd stay around, but he didn't.