This weekend marked the 10th annual Alexandria Outdoor Film Festival, and the organizers hit us where it hurts: Saturday night’s feature was “Rogue One,” which LeeLee and I couldn’t dare pass up.
As you know by now, I’m a huge fan of a picnic, and frankly an outdoor movie seems the perfect venue for such a thing! So Saturday afternoon, I rolled up my sleeves (well, actually, at 90+ degrees today, my sleeves were short to begin with) and got to work in the kitchen whipping up a little feast for two. (All our usual movie-going friends were booked up already this weekend! Oh, the humanity!)
I knew we’d want an anchor – in this case, a turk’y and cheese sandwich topped with avocado – and a side, as well as something that would be sweet to end the meal. Our CSA, Great Country Farms, recently sent us a fresh shipment of potatoes, and before long potato salad was calling my name.
Now, typically I use my grandfather’s recipe for potato salad, and it has always served me well. But there were a few differences in today’s recipe that I needed to account for: The potatoes we had on hand were new potatoes, not Idaho or Yukon Gold, and – most criminal of all – we had no Worcestershire sauce with which to doctor the potatoes as they boiled. Anyone who knew my grandfather knew that the latter was a sin. So since I was already going quickly down the road to perdition, I elected to seal the deal with some sour cream instead of mayo and some Dijon mustard instead of yellow just to see where that got me. I know Pop’s chuckling to himself in heaven; he was nothing if not thoughtful when it came to changing times.
For a sweet treat, I knew LeeLee and I didn’t want the temptation of a traditional dessert, so instead I whipped up a fresh fruit salad starring blackberries and blueberries from the morning farmer’s market and … strawberries from the grocery store. So much for 100% local! But they tasted great anyway.
I readily admit that we brought a couple of cans of wine (to avoid using glass) to toast our meal and movie, and after dinner we played a mean game of Mille Bornes before the feature began. All in all, a successful night at the outdoor theater! And you can’t beat the prices.
:)