1/22/08

Dinner Party for....Seven?



So I had another dinner party last night. Originally it was going to just be 3 of us. But then I got all excited and spur of the moment invited more and more and more people until I realized that there would be 7 of us. The I momentarily freaked out. Where will everyone sit? Will they fit in my apartment? Do I have enough dishes? That match?

Then I calmed down.

These are my tips for an impromptu 3 becomes 7 dinner party:

• Do not freak out, it just wastes energy
• Just double the recipe and it should all turn out fine
• In a small space like mine where we eat around the giant coffee table, I just pulled all of my furniture apart by an extra foot to create more space for people, that seemed to help.
• Serve Ice Cream for Dessert (no prep time!) and ask your aunt to bring home made cookies!
• Don't worry about the house being clean, just shove the litter box into the shower and clean the faucet on the sink so that the chrome is shiny, then light the bathroom by candlelight.
• This one is important: Set the table ahead of time. Do not leave this until the last minute.
• Put the wine out so that people aren't all up in your kitchen looking for glasses, the wine and the bottle opener. Have it in the other room and ask someone else to open and pour it for your guests!
• Relax because, as my bf's mom says, anything tastes good if you didn't have to cook it yourself.

Phew. I had a lovely time and everyone else seemed to too. I didn't wash the dishes last night and I'm enjoying the festive left overs this morning. Maybe I'll even leave them for tomorrow...

As for the menu, I tried a new recipe from sunset magazine:




Here are the table before and after pics:


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hve you ever had bigger dinner parties at your apartment? If so, how do you work out the sitting down and eating situation? I have a small place but have always wanted to invite a bunch of people over at the same time. How would you go about making sure people don't have to eat standing up?

_GA

Decorno said...

Oh, your pics are great! Don't you love the zebra peeking through your glass table? So cute.

Decorno said...

PS - love your post so much, I wrote about it on Decorno today.

john said...

Wow that dish you prepared look de-lish-ous!!!!!!

laure said...

And it was surprisingly easy too, john. Except that there's this whole part about frying the pasta noodles first, and then they got burnt and/or absorbed all of the oil. So, room for improvement.