Dinner party on a Monday night

Tonight it’s my turn to host book club. No easy task on a school night at 7pm right after work. My favorite part -right before the guests arrive- lighting candles and choosing music will be rushed as I scurry home at 5:30 or 6 and jump into an apron. The cute vintage kind, it makes everything more charming, even the disasters.

Yesterday I dragged out my collection of recipes I’ve saved from magazines, to make some day. A day when I have lots of time and money to buy weird ingredients for use only once. I have the “let’s eat gourmet every night” fantasy going. It seems so do-able. But then so did the veggie lasagne I assembled last night to pop into the oven an hour before dinner. It took 3 hours of chopping and boiling to put together. Yummy butternut squash, not at all delightful to peel and chop up. Who knows if it was even worth it yet. It would have been so easy to buy something already made.

I confess, to buying premade food and saying I cooked it. I’m not saying when or what, just that I’ve done it. And yes, I’ve stashed dirty dishes in the oven when I ran out of time. It’s the idea of cooking I love, not the actual doing it. I think it’s super cool and appealing, a gal who can toss a few things together and feed people. But my specialty is really the martini party, lots of drinks and snacks. It’s hard to keep refilling the blood orange-tinis and do real food at the same time.

Wonder what happened to my ex-boyfriend, the amazing cook who lived right down the street? Kidding.