Family meal is usually simple, but sometimes there’s a reason to make it more elaborate. This week we planned on combining Family Meal with a baby shower for one of our food stylists, Morgan. But sometimes with baby showers, the guest of honor finds it a better idea to stay close to home when she starts to have contractions. That’s what happened in this instance. Luckily, Mory Thomas, Charles Granquist and I are all Pisces, and we all had birthdays within the past couple of weeks, so we stepped in as emergency guests of honor. (If you had to interact with us on a daily basis, you would figure out our Pisces-ness pretty fast).

On to the food: Mediterranean was the theme.  Several people in the kitchens made their favorite dishes, including mousakka, various dips, charred octopus with chickpeas, gigante beans with feta, and phyllo dough stuffed with butternut squash from a recipe we cross-tested the day before.

What was for dessert? We celebrated our birthdays with salted caramel brownies. I wouldn’t call the brownies Mediterranean, but I’m sure somewhere in the Mediterranean someone has made these or at the very least, would like them.  On behalf of Mory, Charlie and myself, we'd like to thank Morgan for the great birthday lunch. We did pack up a feast made of a bit of everything to send to Morgan and her baby, in case you’re wondering.