Dinner Party.3

"It tastes like a giant oreo!" --Warren, on his first experience of my woopie pies (they were burnt though, and, incidentally, looked rather unlike this picture). Forget about spelling bees and horse and buggies, this is what the Amish are (rightly) famous for.




I decided to return to my roots and embrace my quirks--the one/two thing(s) that grad school has taught me most clearly thus far--in the menu. This means Pigeons. Isn't this an unbelievably delightful name? It wasn't until after I assured Cordelia that there was nothing in them from any actual pigeons that she deigned to try them. The dish is stuffed cabbages, an old Pennsylvania dutch recipe that my mother and grandmother used to make, and I adored.

Additionally, I made a variation on the chicken and waffles dish I do love, serving chicken and biscuits (although, for reasons not clear to me, the biscuits were absolutely flat and Myrrh had to repeatedly reassure me that the world, in fact, was not ending, and that we would all eat them and that we would like them; and so we did). I forgot, however, the cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top that really shouldn't be forgotten.

Somehow all of this German food tended toward philosophical conversation (imagine!)--during the course of the evening, Aquinas, er, uh, Whigwham debunked the myth of essentialism by appealing to original sin (what a Calvinist impulse, I know!--there is lingering Calvinism in him, though). You know, my answer to this point is, Do we really believe in original sin? Especially if it prevents an essential difference between men and women's souls.

We also decided at precisely what point souls come into twins, whether those twins occur just days into a pregnancy or years after birth, whether in humans or in flatworms--the souls of flatworms are actually vitally important. As is the possibility of implanting a monkey embryo in Cordelia. (Cordelia: "And what would be wrong with implanting a monkey embryo in me?" Lenore: "It couldn't take! You're going to be a nun!")

Of course a priest and a Slovak were present; really, what sort of dinner party would it be without those two?

Quote of the night: While Myrrh was saving my biscuits and helping me roll them out, and I was reading the recipe. Lenore: "Roll out the dough 1/2 inch think and then cut them out with a two-inch thing." Myrrh: "A two-inch thing?!" Yes, of course--it meant the bell canning jar I was holding in my hand--a two-inch thing.