I was on my way to the grocery store Friday, listening to a college radio station that has rather odd programming, when I heard an old, old song - a duet featuring Louis Armstrong and another Louis - that mentioned corned beef and cabbage. At that moment, I decided to get a corned beef brisket and a cabbage and invite the kids to Sunday dinner. We'd have fried okra and purple hull peas from our garden for side dishes.
The grocery store had a corned beef brisket, shrink-wrapped with a packet of spices.
When I got home, I sent everybody a text inviting them to Sunday dinner at 5:30. Son #1 jumped on the invitation. Son #2 said he would be working, but the wife and kids might make it. Before the afternoon was over, Son #3 (who nearly grew up here and calls me "Ma") made contact, and I invited him and his wife to dinner, too.
Saturday, I spent some time surfing the web for corned beef brisket recipes. One recipe served a whipped cream horseradish sauce with the brisket, and I decided that we must have it with ours. Another grocery store run would be required, as there was no whipping cream in my refrigerator. I'd also have to make another dash to the garden to cut okra.
Sunday morning, when I was calculating what time everything had to be happen, I got the brisket out of the refrigerator to double-check the weight and realized that the brisket was not big enough to feed all the people that might show up for dinner - 5 adults and 6-8 kids. When I went back to the store for whipped cream, I picked up a big package of ground beef for a meatloaf to add to the meal.
The actual cooking was scheduled to begin at 1:30, so after the grocery store run, I drove down to the garden to cut okra. I was a bit hesitant to wade in, considering what the fire ants did to my feet two days earlier, but I got in/out without incident.
It is a good thing that I made the meatloaf. Son #2's wife and kids didn't make it, so I didn't feed the four of them, but that brisket shrank to half it's original size. Nearly everyone who ate brisket also ate meatloaf, too. We had a couple of slices of each left over, along with a few vegetables, enough that I might not need to cook again until Wednesday. Woohoo!
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