Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Autumn Dinner Party: Brewed Hazelnut Coffee and Noritake Tea Gazing

On Tuesday night, I had the pleasure of hosting a dinner party for friends. Good fun these things.

But it got off to a chaotic start. I love doing all the peripherals first- like..

1. Getting the Fireplace ready. I spent half the day trying to locate my axes to chop some firewood and harvest pine cones; but couldn't locate them. Then wasted another 1 hour harvesting pine cones from a nearby park but all I came up with were the old crap. All the nice brown fresh cones were all gone.

2. Aromatherapy. Now where's my old aromatherapy candles and burner gone??... 30 minutes..

3. Let's put out some books for my guests to read. 20 minutes... Distracted reading an old Architecture magazine 5 minutes... Turn on Valve amp to warm it up...

4. Cleaning house another hour.

5. Shopping another hour...

6. 5:45pm Guests coming in 15 minutes ... ARGHHH!!!!

7. Peel Onions which takes forever.

Fry Mince (at least I took out the mince early to thaw thank God). 

Chop the mushrooms. Stir Pot. Pour in Tomato Paste Sauce. Lower Fire... Simmer. Clean the Tomatoes - which were all grown in my garden. Chop Tomato stem section and throw them in.

Start Boiling water for pasta.

Chop Celery. Jalepeno Peppers... Brussel Sprouts. Stir Pot. Door Bell rings. Greet 1 Guest. Make Light chit chat. Stir Pot. Throw in vegetables. Ding Dong. More Guest arrive.... HELLO!! ... mingle. Dress table.

Somehow when I began frying the onions I go into uber mode and start multi-tasking like a Geni. 


8. Crap! Forgot to cut the parsley. And its lost in the fridge somewhere... NEVERMIND!!! Get Al to choose the wine. Roger is filling in the fireplace.

9. Pasta is done!!! Serve food... Entertain!!!!

10. Brew Coffee and deploy my antique 50 year old Noritake Arlene coffee/ tea set. WOOHOO!!!!

I love hearing great conversation and seeing my friends enjoy their food and drink.

It also gives me the chance to share some of the small pleasures I enjoy with my friends - like my fireplace, drinking brewed freshly ground coffee, my omg pretty 50 year old Noritake Arlene Tea/Coffee set and lying on the Persian Carpets chatting about life, God and nothing... the women come and go talking of Michelangelo... haha.

I also love cooking my spaghetti bolognese pasta which goes soooo well with red wine during colder weather.

Jeremy and Karen brought two boxes of yummy Krispy Kream Dounuts... really nice with the coffee.

Roger brought microwave popcorn but we didn't get a chance to use it. (I wonder whether it would work in the fireplace?)

Sorry Sue Mei - I didn't have mayo for your potato salad. ekk...

I wasn't too happy with my brewed coffee. This particular blend used Hazelnuts, French vanilla and I'm afraid too much FVanilla coffee beans was added to the mix by mistake.

But most importantly all my guests had a great time.

What fun. I used to have so many dinners like this at my place a number of years back. Its good to have another one.

(Memo to self- next time stock up the fireplace storage earlier. Too troublesome to go get the firewood from the garage).

1 comment:

Karen Lee said...

YM.. you're right, it was a great night :). ~ karen