Beehives to Bell-bottoms

This is the 3rd year that friends and I have gone to Bodles Opera House in Chester, NY for New Year's Eve. They offer dinner and a show for $60. Some years have been better than others, and this year was a hoot. The theme was From Beehives to Bellbottoms. There was a great group of would-be Shirelles (Hotflash) with gigantic Marge Simpson beehives singing the oldies and telling off-color jokes. We all laughed and sang along.

Then...came an announcement that... "Elvis was in the Building." My goodness, I had never seen a live Elvis impersonator. I'm not sure what I expected. But I thought he certainly looked like Elvis, and maybe it's the sideburns and the outfit, but, Damm. He sang, played guitar and stalked the crowd crooning to the ladies causing much merriment. But that could have been the alcohol.


The Hotflash girls dashed off to change while we listened to a comedian from the Catskills, then came back on stage dressed as the Beatles to regale us with classic Beatles tune of the times. One more wardrobe change and they were back in hippie attire to transport us to Woodstock. Midnight came and went with a champagne toast and Auld Lang Syne. Everyone sang along and I think had a great time. At least, I know I did. There is nothing like live music. If you get a change check out some local venues in '09.

Birthday party hats

“I can make a hat out of a paper napkin. You start with a square.”

“No you don’t! You need a rectangle.”


I looked on in disbelief as first Ross then Louise started to fold their napkins into party hats. I have no idea how to make a party hat or anything else for that matter out of a paper napkin. (I can do a great octopus out of a straw paper though.)


We had finished a fantastic meal of chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, smashed potatoes with sour cream and parm and peas with pearl onions. Not to mention the Greek lemon soup to start. Louise had outdone herself again. Out of 6 friends, 3 of us have birthdays within days of each other. 2 others are a mere few weeks ahead. This year we all got together to celebrate.


As each hat was smoothed and folded, they were passed around the table until we all wore tiny blue “Happy Birthday” paper hats perched precariously on our heads. As we laughed over the silliness we had to keep adjusting our chapeaus to keep them from falling off. It felt good to laugh.

Of course there is a maverick in every crowd.

I would much rather have a get-together than a gift any day. Time is the one thing we can offer each other that costs nothing but is worth everything. Thanks you guys for making my birthday, no, our birthdays special. You are special and I treasure our friendship!

The importance of guests

I LOVE entertaining. Yes, I like to cook and entertaining gives me an excuse to do it; but more importantly are the guests. If the food is bad, you can manage around it if you have to, if the guests are boring, you are sunk. I invite people that are charming, witty, well-traveled, well-read, adventurous, playful, good storytellers and good friends. Parties at my house are frequent and some are annual events. There often is hilarity and sometimes singing and dancing far into the night. Occasionally there is sitting around the firepit with burnt marshmallows being pulled off sticks to be sandwiched between a piece of chocolate and graham crackers.

Once in a while visiting friends of friends get roped into the fun. This has happened a few times. This past weekend Michael and David were here. I met them years ago at a mystery dinner. They were as engaging as I remembered.


Menu
Deviled eggs (brought by a guest)
Pigs in a blanket
Pear martinis

The most amazing homemade mushroom soup (brought by a different guest)
Artichokes steamed in chicken broth with white wine and fresh herbs (same guest as the soup)
White wine

Marineated bison steak
Roasted corn on the cob
Potato salad
Green Salad with fresh herbs
Red wine

Strawberry Rhubarb pie with strawberry ice cream
French-pressed Coffee

Thank you all for entertaining me. The flowers are still lovely and the kitchen is finally clean.

Halloween Howl

My family has a tradition of throwing Mystery Dinners. No. There isn't any murder.

How it works is that after the guests are seated, they are given a menu from which they have to select 4 courses of 4 items each. Included in the selection is the first course, main course, dessert AND the utensils and napkin. If you end up with the soup, a knife, an olive and a piece of pie, oh well. You do not get another course until you have finished the first one. It has led to much buffoonery and hysterics.

I give you a Halloween Howl Mystery Dinner.
Elphaba’s Ride
Died So Young
Crusty Shroud
Stained Harvest
Bleeding Ground Dweller
Mummy Remnant
Zombie Snack
Poltergeist Musical Instrument
Ripper’s Victims
Every Devil has one
Terrifying Tidbit
Mold in the Making
Cauldron’s contents
From the Grave
Full Moon Rain
Mackie’s Back

Wine tasting

I walked up to the door, a half an hour late to the party, hoping my offering was still cold enough. It had taken me over an hour to get there. We were 9 people gathered at a friend’s house to celebrate the last days of summer and taste wine. Planned months in advance we were to taste Sauvignon Blanc, a perfect summer sipper. (Never mind that the temperature was to dip into the 40s.) Everyone was to bring a bottle. I had dashed to the wine shop in the morning and agonized over the selection not knowing what to pick. I knew I wanted a NZ wine from Marlborough. In the end, I randomly picked. It had a funny label.

The host relieved me of the wine as soon as I came in and taped a piece of paper with a number to the bottle, covering the label. We were handed pencils and a scoring sheet. Our wine glasses had our names on paper skirts.

We tried the first wine and looked nervously at our score cards. We were to rate each wine according to color, nose, legs, 1st taste, finish and an overall rating. The scale was 1-5: 1 was rot gut and 5 was melt in your mouth. We peered, sniffed, swirled, swished and sipped. What we found was that everyone’s palate is different. Something that I found awful, someone else liked. It is totally subjective.

There were 6 wines. I’ll skip ahead.

The favorite wine was a NZ 2006 Monkey Bay (the one I brought-wahoo.). The 2nd was a Francis Coppola 2005 Yellow label. There were 2 Australian wines, another New Zealand, and a Chilean. Some people had read up and made their selection based on reviews, while others picked theirs because the host and hostess are movie buffs. As I mentioned I liked the label.
We talked about trying Rieslings next time or Syrahs. It was a fun evening and we all learned something, laughed a lot, bluffed our way through the herbaceous versus fruity nose and made jokes about stubble on the legs as they were not smooth enough.

Have you hosted a tasting? How did you do yours?

Come to the Kasbah

Once a year I have a big blowout party. The build-up goes on for months. By sometime in May people will start to subtly inquire. As time progresses and I decide on what I am doing. The first thing everyone says is “What’s the theme?” I always have a theme.
Last year it was Caribbean.

This year it was “Come to the Kasbah” A Moroccan BBQ.

Visualize with me—At the top of the driveway in the backyard, there is a copse of trees that is roughly circular. (My friend Louise came up the day before the party to help cook and decorate.) We tied maroon sheers to the trees to create the allusion of a tent. We used lots of brightly colored linens, maroon pillows on the chairs and a dhurrie rug. There were candles on all the tables and hanging from the trees. It was a magical setting.

The Menu was the following:
Meze
Various olives
Moroccan flavored shrimp and pineapple skewers
Fennel and black olive salad
Beet and cumin salad
Tomato and preserved lemon salad
Spicy Humus

Main course
A vegetable couscous
Garlic Beef skewers
Monkfish skewers with charmoula
Tagine of onions
Tagine of chicken with preserved lemons
Carrot raisin salad

Dessert
Almond snake
Rice Pudding
Ghoriba cookies
Cinnamon cookies

The most requested recipes were the chicken tagine and the carrot salad.

I encourage to try something different next time you have a party.