Ladies who lunch will love lunching on this

Let’s keep celebrating love all month. A few weeks ago, Jan Roth, a friend, invited me to her house in Topeka for lunch with her twin brother’s sweetie, Abbe. She thanked me for driving up for lunch, and I thanked her for the incredibly delightful meal and excuse to have some girl time.

She made incredible salmon and incredibly delicious and flavorful green beans, and we sat and chatted, sipped a little wine and connected. The thing I love about meals shared is that we all slow down and connect. Whether the conversation is just about the food or something political, telling stories of family or of growing up – we all can use a bit more connection in today’s world.

I mentioned in last week’s column that I hosted a Galentine’s luncheon for a dear friend. It was a sweet day of sharing the love, sharing some food and connecting. I think our lifestyles are all too harried. We run from work to home to activities to commitments and need to just slow down. Make the moments meaningful and celebrate friendships more often.

I served this lovely salmon, the green beans, heart-shaped herb biscuits (Julia Child’s recipe, but add more flour if you make them into anything but drop biscuits – that dough is way too wet for cut biscuits) and panna cotta, which I shared with you last week. About 22 ladies gathered, chatted, ate and hopefully left feeling the love.

I realized that serving salmon was a bit of a risk because some people have a strong aversion to it. This recipe’s acidity from the lime zest and lime juice coupled with the whole grain mustard really cuts that fishy flavor some people don’t care for. One of the ladies who came told me she isn’t a big salmon eater but called anyway for the recipe. I considered it a very nice compliment because she’s known to be an incredible, very seasoned cook.

Another friend, Joan, came to my rescue when I realized I was way short on white ramekins. Where in the world did they all go? I used to have 25 and I was down to nine. She not only dropped what she was doing to go buy them for me, but she also stayed the whole evening helping me bake the heart-shaped biscuits, candy the pecans, make the panna cotta and zest the oranges and limes. And we connected over meaningful conversation.

Life is rich when you have such incredible friends.

This should make you laugh: We remodeled our kitchen more than six years ago, and last week was the first time I realized I didn’t have broil on my big oven. So I cranked the oven up to 500 degrees. My salmon didn’t have the crust on it I’d hoped, but it was tasty anyway. Even funnier, I later realized the griddle had “broil” on its dial and that the two knobs had been switched. Joke’s on me. They’ve been switched back to their proper places, and I swear I won’t drink wine next time I’m cleaning.

The only thing different I’d do when making these mouth-watering green beans is make more pecans. You can hardly keep your hands out of them. The maple syrup standing in for the usual suspect ingredient, brown sugar, makes them absolutely irresistible.

Just as a note, I skipped the cayenne, sage and flour when making these beans. When you’re serving a large crowd, I think it’s better to not have heat in the food. Some people don’t tolerate it well. I love sage but quite honestly ran out of time to run to my garden to pick some. I skipped the flour, well, because I’m gluten-free and its purpose in this recipe is to thicken the sauce a bit. It was just fine without a thicker sauce.

I added a recipe in this article not served at the luncheon, but one worth sharing while we’re all spreading love and eating delicious sweet treats. I haven’t written to my gluten-free, dairy-free people much in this column, except for maybe healthy eating last month. So here’s your shout-out: You, too, can have super delicious sweet treats and not miss the days of old when you could eat whatever you wished. I’ve made these Peanut Butter Cup Bars so many times I can’t count, and I keep ingredients for them in my pantry at all times because you never know when you might need some. And to keep yourself from overindulging, remember that they freeze beautifully.

A few notes on the Peanut Butter Cup Bars: I use 2 cups of Earth Balance Coconut & Peanut Spread – the chunky version. This is slightly more than what the recipe calls for but it’s in a jar, and using the whole thing makes cleanup easier. I do still add 1/2 cup coconut oil, melted.

Kinnikinnick brand makes great gluten-free “graham style crackers.” They can be purchased at Whole Foods, Natural Grocers and Sprouts. I even saw that Sprouts carries them already ground up. 

I also use Enjoy Life semi-sweet chocolate mini-chips. These chocolatey little morsels will have you fooled that they are real chocolate made with dairy, but they are in fact dairy-free. You can find them anyplace – Dillons, Whole Foods, Natural Grocers and Sprouts.

This story was originally published February 13, 2017 at 3:35 PM with the headline "Ladies who lunch will love lunching on this."