Edamame and Goat Cheese Mint Spread

When talking with friends and their family memories of shared meals, pique-niques, brunches or other unusual food events, it became clear that every family creates, one way or another, their family food tradition (in addition to the national food events such as Thanksgiving Dinner or the Galette des Rois.) Examples of French family traditions are two-hour excruciating Sunday lunch with extended family members (grand-parents or in-laws), Fresh croissants on Sunday morning, left-overs on Sunday evening (to recover from the extended lunch with the extended family), Saturday evening pizza, etc.
We had a few traditions in my family. No Sunday croissants unless there was something to celebrate (birthday for instance) but Wednesday lunch at my maternal grand-parents where the menu 99% of the time was white-fish with sticky rice (we loved it back then!!). My mother would have loved to have a drunch (dinner-brunch) on Sunday evening where we would put leftovers on the table and everybody would help themselves with whatever they felt like... but my dad would not agree and insisted on having an easy formal dinner that evening : coquillettes (elbow pasta) or oeufs cocottes (surprised eggs) became part of the Sunday evening dinner tradition.

As I am now feeding my own family, I have been thinking about establishing some traditions as well. While I'd love to go out for brunch on Saturday or Sunday, it is out-the-question for two major reasons: 1)  We don't have the financial means to go out for brunch everyweek, and 2) My husband does not like brunch at all! He needs his breakfast in the morning so by 11 am he is not hungry enough for omelette, French toasts, pancakes, sausages or whatever brunch menu!  And when we do have brunch (like twice a year?), by 3pm, he feels hungry again (I don't know how much of his hunger is real or just a result of his negative attitude towards brunch in the first place..). Lunch and dinners with extended family are unfortunately out of the question for obvious geographical reasons... So, as I have already written on my post on kale chips, we have been having our Friday evening apéritifs. And if we have friends over for dinner on week-ends, we'll serve it as well! This is something we all look forward to and my kids get more and more excited about it. We do have to restrain them from gulping on olives, guacamole, gougères, roasted chickpeas, kale chips, simple nuts or whatever I manage to put together like this Edamame and Goat Cheese Spread!  They (and they take it from me!!) could just eat apéritif munchies and be fully contented (that's why I generally feed them a proper dinner before). I find that our Friday apéros are an easy family tradition; a perfect time together to relax! What are your family traditions? Bon Appétit!

Ingredients:
- 1 pound (450 grams) of shelled edamame.
- 1 small fresh goat cheese (about 100 grams or 3.5 oz)
- Juice of one lemon
- 1 or 2 sprigs of fresh mint
- Olive Oil
- Salt, black pepper to taste
- Hot peppers (optional)

• Bring water to a boil to boil the edamame until fully cooked. Rince with cold water and drain.
• Transfer to a food processor and add the fresh goat cheese, the lemon juice and the fresh mint. Blend until smooth, adding Olive oil to reach creamy consistency.
• Add salt, pepper to taste.
• Serve chilled with pita chips.

My Personal Comments:

• You could add red onions or garlic and cilantro to spice it up a bit but I found that, for the children, this recipe with a little bit of Tabasco worked well.