Dinner parties galore

It’s been a week since I last wrote, a very hectic work schedule is the cause.

The girl that works for me is out for a funeral in Jamaica so I’m doing her work along with mine. We also have the spring meeting coming up this week and I found out last Thursday that I would be going this Tuesday to provide Tech support. Just another example of my work’s brilliant planning skills. All of this and the fact that I had a gourmet dinner planned for Saturday evening made me wake up at 2:30am on Friday night. Ughh. I “computed” for about an hour and had a very strong gin and tonic thinking that would help, it didn’t. Dave ended up waking up and coming to find out where I was, he was smart enough to recommend a sleeping pill. I took one and was asleep within 15 minutes.

The only problem with those things is I don’t feel like I really sleep when I take one. So even though I was passed out from the pill, I felt like I only had 3 hours sleep the whole day. It was horrible.

Anyway, we had Robert and Kathy, Ralph and Amy, Mikko and Rob, and Maria for dinner on Saturday evening. One of the reason I couldn’t sleep the night before was the dinner and who was going to be there. Mikko is the chief at the Finnish Embassy so I always try to cook something impressive when he comes over. Also Robert and Kathy love to go to good restaurants and know their wines, they even own some land in California growing grapes for wine making. So I was worried everything would turn out well. This is what we had.

Seared sea scallops atop wilted spinach with a calvados cream sauce for the starter.

Grapefruit and Gin sorbet for a pallet cleanser.

Lamb chops done French style with saffron rice and grilled asparagus for the main. The saffron came from our friend Andy direct from India.

Homemade cream cheese ice cream (sounds funny but it was amazing) with half a poached pear cut into a fan, poached figs and a red peppercorn sauce.

Very rarely does everything go right and Saturday night, it all went right! I was thrilled with the results and there was nothing left on the plates. I love having dinner parties because it’s one of the few things in life that I get instant gratification out of. One day of cooking and happy people at the end of it . Always good.

For the nine of us, we went through 3 bottles of Champaign, four bottle of white wine, 5 bottles or red wine, a whole bottle of Pear Williams brandy, and most of a bottle or regular brandy. This doesn’t even include the shots (grapefruit and gin sorbet) that where served before the main. We were all very happy by the end of the meal.

I got up on Sunday before Dave which is very unusual for me. I had my coffee and then ended up munching on the rest of the sorbet. So I got a bit toasty in the morning and started making calls. We ended up at Tony and Kiat’s house after I picked up lil’David from the circle. So it’s Tony, Michael Mathews, lil’David, Rob and Mikko, Dave, Kiat and myself sitting on the back deck drinking for the whole afternoon, and it was a gorgeous day. All of this before we go to Brett’s for dinner at 6 that evening.

We get there and we have exactly the same thing I served the night before at my dinner party. Scallops to start with, lamb for the main and ice cream for dessert. It was all quite good but very funny. We meet some interesting people whose names I can’t remember. Mind you I was pretty tanked at this point to the point that remembering the meal was pretty amazing.

We then leave that party and remember that Rick has a come meet the mother thing going on at his place which is on the walk back home. So we stop in for yet one more drink. We stay for just a little bit. I was exhausted at this point so we take a cab back home.

Next thing I know, it’s morning and I have to go to work. I’m moving a little bit slow today. Tomorrow I’m off to Chicago for my work’s spring meeting. Hopefully I’ll be able to write some where I’m there.