How to Stage a Trenna Lunch – with recipes

by Greg

The holiday season is upon us, so I thought I’d do an entertaining friends post.

Lunch

Trenna absolutely loved mixing with people, and she loved good food. And lunch time was the ideal socialising time for her.

First thing in the morning she was often stiff and/or sore from the night, and her morning drugs had not had time to take effect. In the evening she was often exhausted from the activities of the day. Lunch time though, that was a sweet spot.

Several year ago Trenna devised a way of entertaining friends over a meal that was easy and relatively stress free. We hosted lunches dozens of times and it was a hit on each occasion.

It was nothing clever or special, but it just worked.

We typically just had one or two friends over at a time. This meant we could have quite detailed and indeed intimate conversations, and it worked well.

We didn’t call it a Trenna Lunch at the time, in part because I did most of the physical work, under strict supervision! But I have adopted the name since Trenna passed away and I am glad I do.

Here’s how we did it.

The General Idea

Well here it is…. it is a grazing meal in which everyone makes their own sandwiches!

I like to think though, that it is a bit more sophisticated than that.

A key to the whole meal is the items that were put on the table. These included:

A Pasta Dura – or some other soft, white bread loaf. It would be put on a cutting board on the table with a bread knife. Just before we sat down I would cut several slices, after that it is every person for them self.
A Range of Cold Meats/Cold Cuts, Thinly Sliced – that morning we would have bought 3 or 4 types of meats. Typically mortadella, ham, sopressa, and maybe a Hungarian salami, or perhaps pastrami. The exact choice wasn’t important provided there was a choice of 2 or 3 meats.
A Few Cheeses – camembert or brie, stored out of the fridge for at least a few hours, slices of Jarlsberg Light, which is something we pretty well always had in the fridge, and maybe one other cheese, perhaps some red Leicester, Edam or Gouda.
Butter, and Extra Virgin Olive Oil – both are options for spreading on the bread as you start to build your open sandwich.
Sun Dried Tomato Paste – we could usually just grab this out of the fridge from one we had prepared earlier on. The recipe for our Sundried Tomato Paste is HERE.
Onion Marmalade – another staple from the fridge. We would make up a batch using a dozen brown onions which would make up a few jars. I’ve pasted the recipe at the bottom of the page, HERE.
Olives – usually black ones. Kalamatas, or ligurian when we could find them. I think we may have put out green olives sometimes.
Melanzane – pickled eggplant. There was almost always a jar of it in the fridge. See the recipe BELOW.
Giardiniera – Similarly, there was always a jar of these picked vegetables waiting in the fridge.
Semi Dried Tomatoes – we would usually include them as they were sitting there in the fridge, but really they weren’t needed if we had the sun dried tomato paste (which we always did).
Sliced Fresh Tomato – we always bought the tomatoes a few days early and let them ripen so they were really red. We would usually sprinkle some fresh basil leaves from the garden over the sliced tomato.
Sliced Avocado – put onto a serving dish, ready to be squashed onto the bread.
Artichoke Hearts – just from a jar. Sometimes we included these sometimes not. They were never all that popular with guests.
Lettuce Leaves – usually I would put a washed iceburg lettuce on the table, but Trenna and I usually didn’t use it for this meal.
Pepper Grinder and Sea Salt

Table Setting

Part of the entertainment of the event was for the guests to watch me as I tried to remember to include everything on the table. I would happily do it knowing full well that if I forgot something Trenna would notice as soon as she sat down.

I would set a place mat for each person and put a small cutting board on it which was the site on which you would construct your meal. A spreading knife, wine glass and a water glass for each person and a paper napkin with pile more on hand. Of course we would have 1 or 2 bottles of wine on the table.

Trenna’s favourite wine was Tassell Park Chenin Blanc (you can read about Trenna’s connection to it HERE) and it went very well with this meal.

Other Preparation

With a thought to later in the afternoon I would have the espresso machine on and some chocolates (often the dark chocolate Lindt balls in the black wrapper) on hand to serve with the coffee.

If we had desert it would usually be some fresh fruit – sliced mangos or melons. Trenna was quite partial to grapes, so in season we would often have those in a bowl on the table.

Eating!

Presumably by now you have figured out how the meal works. I would point out were everything was, and what everything was, particularly the meats and the cheeses. And then we would invite everyone to just do what they wanted.

One way of doing it would be to grab a slice of bread, spread some butter on it, or drizzle it with oil, then spread on the tomato paste. Perhaps squash some avo on, a piece of cheese, a slice or two of meat and top it with some fresh tomato and a basil leaf.

Then bite and enjoy.

Why This

The format has a pile of advantages that suited us well. Guests could eat as much or as little as they wanted and they could avoid items they didn’t like without any fuss. It allowed for plenty of conversation as for most of the meal you are actually constructing your sandwich rather than eating it, so usually you don’t have your mouth full.

There is an advantage too in that you have an excuse if you don’t want to make eye contact whilst you talk about a difficult subject. Just look around for your next ingredient. If there is a pregnant pause in the conversation you can fill it by asking someone to pass something.

The meal usually takes quite a while which is great for conversation. Firstly guests are watching me put item after item on the table, and watching me racking my brain trying to think of what I have forgotten. And then there is the time actually making your open sandwiches and eventually eating them. And more talking time whilst I clear everything away.

Because everyone has participated, and have used their own artistic licence in preparing the meal the whole thing seems more of an event than just a meal.

In the last year or two I would often make Trenna’s sandwiches allowing her to use all her breath to talk, to ask questions, and as she did so well, to listen. It was the sort of good social event we could have with the very minimum of energy expenditure.

Invites

As you probably know, in her last year or two Trenna was suffering quite badly with heart and lung failure. It was really quite hard for her to get out and be with friends. Moreover, just thinking about that seemed like such a challenge.

I therefore took it upon myself to invite one or two friends over for lunch. Not too often, that would have been too much of a burden. But, if I spotted a break in appointments and other events I would invite someone over, and then tell Tren. She appreciated not having to make those decisions.

So we spent many hours over those last few years, listening to friends, and finding out and conveying the latest news. It also provided a great opportunity for the retelling of a lifetime of stories from Trenna’s fascinating past.

The enduring memory I have is laughter, so much laughing. When you had a lunch with Trenna you always ended up laughing.

ENJOY!

Recipes

In case you missed the link in the text the recipe for Sundried Tomato Paste is HERE.

And I am pasting the Onion Marmalade recipe, as it appears in Trenna’s iPad below.

BIZARRO ALERT: The PDF of this recipe that I have on my PC looks perfect. But when I have inserted the PDF into the website the photo WITHIN the PDF has turned upside down – HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE!!

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