JELLY ROLL JIVE

This weekend, a few of our wonderful neighbors had a locally grown tapas night. If you follow my husband's blog, you know by now that we really like our neighbors. We are the oldest among them, but possibly the least mature. Kurt has been known to don a knight's helmet and shield to do battle with the young son of one of the families. Its a tough job, but he's happy to do it.

Among the glorious items brought to the table by the different families, was asparagus from Eastern Washington, local salad greens, a quinoa salad with home grown and dried black beans, several home-baked breads, and a potato frittata (or tortilla, as we were in a Spanish tapas mode).

The only things local about the cake that I took were the eggs. Our hens are old and cranky, but they each manage to give us an egg every couple of days. The cake those eggs helped leaven was a Jelly Roll or Roulade. I haven't made a sponge cake in ages. The recipe I used is from the Better Homes and Garden Cook Book. You know the one - the 3-ring binder with the cheery red and white checked cover. Any self-respecting woman born in the 50's and married off in the 70's knows the one I'm talking about.

What got me thinking about the cake was a walk that I was taking through food blog world one day when I ran across a Mascarpone cheese frosting recipe. The only revision I made to Ms. Stewart's Mascarpone icing recipe is that I added some of my own strawberry jam for a little more flavor and a sweet pink color. After the final roll up, I frosted the cake with a thin chocolate gloss and piped some of the leftover filling over the top. One of the more excitable neighbors exclaimed, "Its a giant Ding Dong!"

For the kids (and Kurt!) I made Peanut Butter and Jam Thumbprint Cookies. In these, I used the wonderful local soft white wheat pastry flour from Nash Organic Produce and more of my strawberry jam. I bought the flour at our Saturday Farmer's Market, a treasured part of where we live. The chewiness and the nutty flavor of the flour was great in these cookies.

We ate a lot and laughed even more. We talked about the food, where it came from, and how we prepared it. It was a fun and tasty evening full of good lessons and more.