Dusk. Good food. vino e miei amici.
The only thing I would want to be different was the temperature in my house. Aside from the heat, I was able to treat my closest friends to a nice evening of dishes I learned to make in Italy, some proseco and a dessert I reinvented from a heard, and barely recalled, recipe.
This is the stuff life is made of. These are the moments life is for. I was nervous because some details were off: my napkins and place-setting were lost - misplaced, in my move into this house last year. I had to rethink settings, had to run out for more. I forgot about great thing about the wonderful friends I have, and the wonderful to entertaining and not being governed by etiquette rules - break them, make the evening work for you, and if it comes from your heart, it can't be wrong.
My friends are amazingly versatile women who adapt to any situation - they dealt with my casual, country-side, in-door sit-down meal - and my forgetting to put out the red vino after our initial toast with proseco.
Laughter and teasing about how they had no idea I was so into cooking - and pleased with the result, we relaxed into the living room. The truth is, cooking for my friends is something I always wanted to do, but entertaining in my old apartment was out of the question. As much as I wanted to do it, the place didn't have space enough for a nice dinner for two, let alone a group. It was a large single unit - a bachelor pad if you will (or bachelorette, if you won't.)
I often dreamed of cooking for my friends and family, for my soul. The sound of cooking utensils on ceramic, or cutting boards and on pots and pans, is one of the most comforting sounds for me - just like the sound of stirring a cup of coffee - soft clinking of a demitasse spoon against ceramic or china, the soft scrape, scrape, scraping when you hit the La Perruche cane sugar cube (my favorite) at the bottom of the cup; the memories and feelings stirred in me by this ritual are the reasons I won't give up coffee. I'm far too ritualistic to give that up.
After prepping six different appetizer's and all the rest of the meal-- garlic bread, pasta alle oglio e peperoncino - and cherry pomodori e prosciutto, garden greens salad with balsamic vinaigrette; cleaning the back-yard, running around, searching for a good replacement for my choice of starter wine (when after tasting my tester bottle, I discovered that the wine was corked. I was too nervous to risk that my second bottle was also corked - thank the wine gods for BevMo!) and picking up my wonderful pots from Three Chihuahua Pottery to decorate my 'garden' (more on Three Chihuahua's later, but I'll say this, if you want care paid to you, and your choices in garden pottery, you've got to visit Daniel - he's fantastic and has the most beautiful, sweet eyes!) -- I was afraid I'd be too tired to enjoy the evening. That was all laid to rest when I welcomed my friends - seeing them lifted my spirits got me through a four course dinner. It was one of my best evenings since moving into this new house.
Good food, friends and wine - how could a spirit do anything other than soar?
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