the autumnal saturday lunch

Saturday lunch was nice because it was a coming together of a lotta people I love- my baby sis was in town for the weekend for her fall break, and we had my aunt over for lunch.

I like turning everything into an event, so I did a soup salad ‘n sandwiches extravaganza, the star being MAKE YOUR OWN GRILLED CHEESE!

We begin, obvi, with bread. This was purchased at the farmer’s market, on the express recommendation of the bread girl, who said this chewy, grains-n-seeds-packed 9 Grain was her absolute favorite for grilled cheese.

It sliced beautifully, and went in an adorable basket.

 

Toppings selections: in front, the cheese of course (regular readers may recall that my mother recently won SIX POUNDS OF CHEESE as a door prize. We still have a *lot*).

Then your choice of thinly sliced leftover roast chicken, tomato, and/or apple (of the Honeycrisp persuasion, yum!)

My sister, bless her heart, had all four… frankly, I find this a little weird. She said it was delicious.

Next we address the soup. My dear friend Trader Joe did most of the work.

However, this, like most of their packaged soups, skews a little sweet for my taste. This was quickly remedied by simply tossing a minced up chipotle pepper with a bit of its accompanying adobo sauce into the pan with the soup. Spice, smoke, complexity, bam.

The soup was also enhanced by optional toppers on the side- minced cilantro and chunked up avocado.

And there was the soup station, in all of its glory. With mismatched bowls, because who likes things to be all matchy matchy? And also we have cool bowls.

To get our essential serving of leafy green vegetables, a salad that ended up being ridiculously beautifully color coordinated:

Red leaf lettuce, cucumber, and radishes. All local!

With the optional addition (for some insane reason, some people apparently do not like them! Including my sister) of beauteous beauteous roasted beets. In keeping with the colors!

  

My mom made some fantastic dressing that involved balsamic, olive oil, dijon mustard, and fresh oregano.

  

Ended up having the soup as a first course and then sat down to my beautiful sammy and salad (you KNOW I went back for more beets :D)

We did some of the sandwiches in a griddle and some of them open faced. I went for a simple open-faced apple and cheddar. So so so sublime.

For dessert, we saw adorable little girls selling cupcakes for some kind of good cause (actually they didn’t mention what, hahahaha) at the farmer’s market and obviously had to buy some. They were even Halloween themed! So cute. I ate the ghost and it was delicious.

And for a souvenir, also discovered at the farmer’s market, we spotted some gifts for my hairy cousins: my aunt’s two Scotties.

Two cheese flavored, one peanut butter. Those dogs are livin’ good.