Farmers Weekly Review

By Joanie Stiers

Butcher block paper covered the 60-inch round table, transforming it into an oversized food platter. Piles of cubed cheeses, sliced cured meats, olives, fruits, veggies and spreads dominated that five-foot-diameter space. Salami shaped into roses, fanned crackers and varying flavors of cheeses gave aesthetic appeal to a party spread worthy of a meal.

While that bridal shower display upstages anything on my kitchen island, I so fondly enjoy the holiday-time finger foods that fill bowls, line platters or cover charcuterie boards. They deliver big taste in bite-size amounts, and the trendy charcuterie concept of artistically piling little foods on wood cutting boards and platters (or tables) makes presentation fun.
The centuries-old French practice has evolved from charcuterie boards of strictly meats to include creative displays of cheeses, fruits, vegetables, crackers, spreads, desserts, nuts and even candy. Generation Z adores the concept. Recognizing that, the Farm Bureau has sponsored charcuterie classes to connect with consumers born in the late 1990s and early 2000s. What an opportune time to talk nutrition. Talk food-shopping habits. Talk Illinois agriculture.
And therein lies one of my loves for finger foods: socialization. Little foods are social to make, social to display and social to eat. Family and friends congregate around the kitchen island to converse as they hover the inventory of tantalizing finger foods like ham-and-ranch wrapped pickles, tortilla rollups with a dab of salsa, seasoned pretzels and homemade Chex mix. Toothpicks aid dining on bacon-wrapped little smokies and homemade meatballs to help move this eating experience from appetizer to meal.
Sometimes, the main course includes small sandwiches of chicken salad and triangle-cut, sliced loaf bread sandwiches of our grandma’s ground bologna salad. The beloved family-recipe cheeseball often triggers stories of cheeseball design competitions or inside jokes of cheeseball thefts from Christmases past. We always have carrots, broccoli florets and grapes to add nutritional balance to the finger food lineup if nothing more than to feel better about Mom’s Crispix Mix. That sugar-laden recipe probably four-folds the simple cereal’s calories. But dang, it’s addictively good, and she makes it only during the holidays.
My childhood 4-H club had a “finger food potluck” at every January meeting, a novel idea in an era when most meals needed more cutlery than fingers. Small foods made the meal and the memories then, as they do now.

About the author: Joanie Stiers farms with her family in West Central Illinois, where they raise corn, soybeans, hay, beef cattle, backyard chickens and farmkids.