Saturday, June 25, 2011

Eating my way through summer swim meets: Muffuletta and Apricot Tart

One of the last Lime Pie pops from the previous swim meet went to one of my neighbors on the kids summer swim team. She said that the were good and I asked her if she wanted to collaborate for dinner at the next swim meet.   She was quick to come on board although parents should have fun at swim meets too, even though there was a bit of a double standard of eating gooey yummy stuff while the kids are supposed to be out there giving their athletic best performance.

I went through my sandwich recipes in Evernote and found a few good sandwiches. I traded a few emails with my neighbor and she said she'd bring a dessert. Dessert and sandwiches - that's a dinner in my book!

Even though, my neighbor said in her email she went to Tulane in New Orleans, I went with the muffuletta. It seems like such a simple, yet flavorful combination for a summer's evening. I was wrong on at least one count, but we'll get to that later.


Early in the day, I made the olive salad, so that the flavors could nicely come together.  I'll cop to it - I took more than one spoonful during the day. A good cook always tastes their product!



The sandwiches came together quite nicely and Kid3 and I headed off to the swim meet.  As we left, it started to rain.  I went back in and grabbed my gore-tex parka, which got me a little joshing from my son. It didn't seem to him that that was the right jacket for a swim meet.

It rained off and on as we went to the swim meet, but it was a light summer rain. I found a spot to sit and our neighbor joined us shortly thereafter. She had brought some salads and an apricot tart. This swim meet was going to be alright!

We enjoyed the sandwiches, as our kids did too between events, then it started to really rain.  We didn't have a shelter to hide out under, so my neighbor hid under her umbrella and I stood up so that my parka would keep me dry. While that kept us both dry, my chair filled with water, so I had no dry place to sit afterwards.  This is where I was wrong: the sandwich was good, but it wasn't a summer's evening. It was like early spring in the PNW with all the rain we got.

What was really funny, if you can call it that, was that the weather kept changing. I could see the break in the clouds that was coming our way and sure enough, the rain would stop, the sun would come out.  And then about 20 minutes later, the rain would start up again.

During one of the sun breaks, we broke out the apricot tart and enjoyed dessert.  Then it started to really rain.  My son went and stood in the warm shower in the locker room for something like 30 events (at least an hour, I stopped keeping track of the time). I think that he was the wisest of all of us. I was just as wet as he was (my boxers were wet), but at least he was warm.

The swim meet might have been unpleasant, but the food was good. And since my trip next week was cancelled, I need to start planning for this Thursday's swim meet!

2 comments:

Melissa said...

Sorry about the rain....that seems to be the same story all across the country! Your sandwiches look amazing! Anytime you want to swing by MN to attend a t-ball game.....feel free!!!

Beau said...

@Melissa - the weather this year has been weird. Its kind of like its trying to be spring and we're a week into summer.
The t-ball invitation... LOL and thanks!