the ZuppeQueen Chronicles

Though most Fredericksburg Texas Main Street retail shops close by 6:00 PM, evening life in Fredericksburg is usually anything but sleepy.  One of the most common evening activities in Fredericksburg is relaxed dining with friends.  Aside from availability of great food, the eclectic mix of locals in this little town always seems to make dining with friends anything but boring.

Last Thursday’s night “meal” email invitation was for “dinner” with our friends Dan & Mary on their farm a few miles east of Fredericksburg.  Dan raises outstanding Fredericksburg Peaches which he sells at his roadside stand on Hwy 290 and he also raises unusual Belted Galloway Cattle on his farm.

I have to admit I knew the gathering was going to be interesting even before the ZuppeQueen and I dressed or the party. The previous day, a frantic email had arrived from Mary correcting the first invitation inviting us to SUPPER rather than to DINNER.  Of course, I had to immediately consult the Wikipedia* to see why it was so important that we have “supper” rather than “dinner”.

Turns out, Supper is the evening meal - ordinarily the last meal of the day, usually the meal that comes after Dinner.  The term is derived from the French word “souper” [ I.E. zuppe, zuppa, or suppe… a hearty soup] but is not required to be soup or stew.  Ok, I learned something new and I had not even shown up for the eats yet.  Yes, I knew the evening was going to be great fun.

Let me say first of all that Dan is of Pennsylvania Dutch decent.  Dan prepared an outstanding traditional family supper, served family style of course for 11 people.  Apparently, Pennsylvania Dutch suppers are the Ying and Yang of the culinary world as the normal meal consists of sweet balanced by salty.  A full blown all out supper would have up to seven sweet and seven salty foods.  The supper Dan and Mary served included sweet gherkins, bread & butter pickles, spicy picked vegetables, two kinds of smoked sausages, Swiss cheese, dried beef and cream cheese rolls, and Dutch pretzels.  That was only the appetizer.

The main course consisted of barbequed (sans sauce) shreaded meat on small rolls, green pea and lettuce salad, tiny beets, and a traditional dish consiting of hard-boiled eggs colored with beet juice. However, the highlight of the evening were the magnificent whopping-big whole apple dumplings all gooey with a butter and brown sugar sauce!  The scrumptious dumplings were served with potato chips and salty Dutch-style pretzels to balance the sweet flavor.

Despite the thick clouds covering the moon and the moisture laden wind storm rolling in from the Gulf of Mexico we had an outstanding fun evening.  It was all due to great friends and a great Pennsylvania Dutch meal.  Perhaps, we will get some much-needed rain out of those clouds this weekend?

*Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia project. The name is a portmanteau of the words wiki and encyclopedia. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most of its articles to be edited by almost anyone with access to the Web site. “Wiki wiki” means “rapidly” in the Hawaiian language.