Dinner Party.6

Goodness gracious, I've been remiss in throwing dinner parties. This is poor. Clearly.

For the occasion of Lawrence's visit from Connecticut (on the way to London) and Sayers and Mr. Sayers's trek from the great city of Philadelphia in order to meet Graham, we had a dinner party. Lawrence called before hand to make sure that I had no before dinner drinks (I had none) in order to bring them. He called also in order to remind me that although it was lent, it was a feast day (I had been aware of this, but he needed to be sure he would be eating meat--I remember that he wasn't such a big fan of the vegetarian lasagna I made on a Friday visit of his some time ago).

Mr. Sayers surveyed the house upon arrival. I was impressed with his thoroughness (he even examined one of the cupboards).

Stearns and Ilana, thankfully, were on hand to help. Cooking with my sisters is a rare thing and a great pleasure (especially because they did so much of the work--yes I invite my sisters to visit and then shamelessly exile them to the kitchen!). Stearns made foccacia, which went over quite well (except when identified by Lawrence as a "pizza thing," but that was before he'd tried it).

From my end, I inadvertently turned my mother's delicious tortellini soup into ravioli soup. Just before I served dinner, Stearns said, "Emily, you know those are ravioli's right?" And then it hit me that when I was in the grocery store trying to figure out why there were so many different types of tortellinis and finally settling on the most cost-effective ones and being vaguely confused as to why some were little spheres and others were donut shaped, that I was just looking at all of the frozen pastas.

The roast came out fine, I'd say. Although there was the same amount as we ate left-over. My mother would be proud at this amount of food. The asparagus was, shall we say, well done. The whoopie pie filling was not whipped (although Stearns says this can be blamed on our dying beaters). This is all I can think of to report. My mother gave me grief for not letting Ilana go to sleep before 2 a.m. (who told her that?!). Myrrh was unfortunately called away by "more important business." Sadly, no one broke any chairs and our bathroom door is fixed (Ilana: "Is it safe to shut the bathroom door?").