up to my ears in empanadas
k-flo and i stayed up til 12:30 last night prepping for tonight's fesitivites. she was making sangria and the cheese/fruit tray and i was making mojitos, cuban sandwiches, and empanadas.
i went to six different stores before i got all the ingredients! (thank you food emporium for the empanada wraps) i found the empanada recipe online- manchego cheese, hazelnuts, raisins, spinach, and onion. . should be good. despite not altering the recipe, there was enough filling to make 40 empanadas. to prepare for the cuban sandiwiches, i also roasted some pork in a red wine, garlic, dill, rosemary, oregano marinade. . .unfortunately i wasn't able to let it marinate overnight. . .but since the pork is just going into sandwiches i doubt it will make a noticeable difference. . my only concern is that i don't have a grill so i won't be able to press the sandwiches but will have to make do with baking the sandwiches in the oven.
as i was squeezing the nth lime for the mojitos (because the lime juice concentrate just won't do). . .i realized that k-flo might be right, i am a perfectionist. . and with this shindig, i have been a bit too ambitious with the menu. . . today after work i'll have to rush to leave early, pick up french bread (wanted it to be fresh), tin foil, more limes or some other fruit juice, seltzer water, a couple more pitchers, and flowers. . .ahhh. . the crazy thing is i actually enjoy the stress and chaos of throwing a party together.
by 9 or 9:30 everything will be ready, the food will be displayed beautifully, i'll have a glass of wine in hand decked out in my havana nights party dress the rest will be about having a good time, relaxing, and catching up with my friends.
1 comment:
Yeah, you gotta love it; I myself have a love-hate relationship with hosting parties. We’re told we always go overboard (but we always have a smash hit on our hands, though, which might not happen were we to cut corners. When we host, we host, am I right or am I right?)
Typically, you have to invite noticeably more people than you’re ready to have over, because fewer people tend to show up. So figure i for “invitees”, at i + 15. Problem is when they ALL show up, or just about! So in the event that THAT happens, you have to have enough of everything in anticipation of that - ergo the escalating cost. Going out at the last minute for more seltzer and the likes? We invented that, V! I have a patent on that! The flowers are a nice touch - I’m too cheap (broke!) to buy any by the time I hauled that extra cooler of beer over in the corner, by the lineups of wine bottles. You sound like you have a theme to your shindigs, which is way hipper than me. I can’t imagine what a Havana nights dress even looks like, but I’m intrigued. My theme is feed everyone, get everybody drunk, outlast everyone.
I’m not sure what I like best about throwing a parteh. The preparations, or the parteh, or the aftermath, during which of course, we go over the events of the night. The preparations means anxiety - “You think we have enough pasta? Salad dressing! We forgot the salad dressing! We don’t have enough knives!”, but you get to set everything up picture perfect, so a lot of love goes into that. THE party itself - sorry, “partEH”, is the end all and be all of your going through the motions in the first place, but personally I don’t see a minute of it go by. Relaxing and catching up with good friends?? I should be so lucky. I’m mopping up ice cubes in the kitchen, fetching more paper towels, trying to remember the name of the person I just greeted with a hug at the door, changing a diaper, playing a song with Andy, but on bass, cuz Steve is doubling on guitar, getting the “petit fours” out of the oven in the nick of time, plunging the toilet upstairs, changing the CD cuz Ann is sick of hearing Ray Charles... I suppose given my natural bashfulness, it’s a good thing I don’t have a minute to myself. I’d go crazy with stress trying to keep up my end of a conversation with people I haven’t seen since the last party. The aftermath just might be my favorite part actually, V; picking up shards of broken glass on the carpet at 4:00 in the morning, filling bags with empty bottles and bags with paper plates & napkins and cold scraps, soaking up beer out of the carpet with a towel, starting a Lost & Found box, putting things away in the dishwasher, while all along discussing the events of the night with The Wife.
I’m finding that the smaller get-togethers are infinitely more fun than the monster bashes. First: cops don’t come over to break things up, nobody pukes, and no drunks try to play guitar annoyingly loud at all hours of the night (or worse: drums!) Best get together I had was the fondue I made, about a month ago. I think you call it “hot pot”. You wrote about that once, recently; it SOUNDS like the same thing, but I don’t know if it is. You have a boiling broth in a pot in the center of the table and everybody’s got their long neck fork and you put meat in it - or shrimp or whatever - and you have these little funky dips all around? That was cool. Light jazz playing in the background, and it’s all about talking talking talking.
What’s a Havana dress?
Hope your sandwiches come out alright.
I'm through with these two-sentence comments; next time, I go to town!
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