Dinner Parties

This past weekend was our 'entertaining at home' weekend. (If you're new to this blog, check my post on Jan 31.)

Friday night Joe & I had dinner at Rocco's, an authentic family-style Italian restaurant in McLean. He had gnocchi with meatballs and I had the ravioli special. As usual, it was too much to finish, so we brought home left-overs.

After dinner we went to the grocery store. I really don't like grocery shopping, but I also don't think it fair to send Joe alone, especially since the purpose of going that night was to get food for our dinner parties - a task of my inventing.

As a treat to Joe for his recent promotion, on Sat morning we splashed into the city in the rain and bought him a used Tony Little Gazelle exercise machine from someone on Craigs List. It was what he wanted. Then we came home, had our Italian left-overs for lunch, and started cleaning the house.

Man, do I miss our cleaning lady. (Actually I prefer the term housekeeper over cleaning lady.) We used to have a housekeeper come every other week. Some may think of this as a luxury. I used to. But then I decided it was simply a decision based on how I want to spend my time. Do I want to spend every weekend doing some kind of housecleaning, and never having the entire house clean all at the same time? The answer was no. I preferred to part with some of my money and have the entire house spic-n-span on the same day so I could spend my weekends doing other things. So, for about 6 years now we have had the same housekeeper. But 6 months ago we got fed up with our housekeeper (long story) and informed her that her services were no longer required. We figured we'd go back to cleaning ourselves for a few weeks, and see how it went. Unfortunately, we have not yet returned to having a housekeeper. We kind of enjoyed having that extra money, and we just kind of accepted not having a clean house every two weeks. Anyway, back to my story...

After cleaning the house and starting the cooking, we both showered and got ready for our company. My cousin Nez (short for Inez) and her husband Steve came shortly before 6. We ate in the kitchen. We had chicken breasts stuffed with feta, ricotta and spinach, lightly breaded and fried. Dee-lish! We also had salad and almond rice. They brought a chocolate cake for dessert. We had a great time talking, laughing, and catching up. It had been over a year since we'd seen each other. She only lives 45 minutes away, but our lives are very different. They left shortly before midnight. Good times.

Sunday we went to George's house for his big yard sale. The weather was a thousand times better than the day before. On the way home we stopped by our friends Michael and Jamie's new condo. They were painting, but seemed to enjoy the interruption in order to show us around. It's on the top floor and has a huge, fabulous balcony. The decor was a bit dated, (the kitchen screams 'Golden Girls') but I know these guys, and this place will be FAB-U-LOUS when they're done. They're getting married in MA in Sept.

Then we came home and started getting ready for dinner party number two. Our friends Gene and Tracy were supposed to come, but on Sat we found out that Gene's dad had recently had bypass surgery, so he and Tracy were in PA with his family. So we invited Kerry, Hugh, Kelly, and George to dinner in place of them. Since there were 6 of us, we ate in the dining room. We had pork tenderloin, mashed potatoes, corn casserole, peas, and biscuits. (Sound familiar? See our menu in my post dated Feb 13.) It was delicious - Joe is such a good cook - and everyone enjoyed it. For desert we had a fruit torte and coffee. They left at 8.

I may have trouble keeping my New Year's resolution to have a dinner party every month, because in May we are going to be out of town every weekend except the first weekend, which is Mother's Day. But I don't feel too badly about it since my original resolution was for one dinner party every month, and so far we have had 2 dinner parties each month. They really are fun, and we have gotten used to entertaining casually. And since we will likely be spending many weekends at the beach this Spring/Summer, its nice to have these dinner parties to stay in touch with our friends.

Bon appetit!