I'll come over at about two o'clock to start prep. We will need to make the Apple Confiture, roast beets, gelato, crepes, and dacquoise - I will make the blueberry soup the night before.
Dinner will start at approximately 7:30.
Here are two not really random experiments that I was quite happy with. 
The First:"Polenta Pie" will not look familiar unless you look closely. Then you will note that it is the braised 'veal breast' (actually pork in this case) that we had for dinner on the 22nd. So if the ingredients are unseemly this is a very suitable and tasty way to contain all the broken bits of things and sauces, etc. Even after I let it rest for an hour it was a bit runny, so if you want the recipe and decide to take the easy way out, make sure and let it rest for at least an hour and a half.
The second (and in my opinion better) of the two experiments involved something based on something that I came across while downloading and reading through the daily French Laundry tasting menus. I came across a Bavarois (Bavarian Cream preperation) that took apple relish. I had two apples, so it was my desire to try to make an apple relish - which I thought might be a savory accompaniment for pork. I mistakenly remembered that I had a pint of duck stock in the freezer, however, and so I switched from a relish to a confiture of apple, pinenuts, lemon, lime and ginger - only to realize that I did not in fact have the aforementioned stock. With the vegetable stock that I did have, I made Risotto alla "Paesana," and it worked out pretty fantastically - so that is going to be the option instead of pork that we'll decide on for the Monday dinner.
I'm going to be cooking primarily from the French Laundry - with the exception of the dessert; so dinner will be for $10, but there won't be as many courses as you are used to.
Dinner will start at approximately 7:30 - 8:00pm.
I was going to go to my Grandparent's house for Easter to show them what I've been up to but Grandma was sick- so I just went to my parent's house; that works out since I'm more comfortable cooking in their kitchen than my Grandparent's. Here's the line-up:
It didn't go quite as well as I hoped in spite of everyone saying everything was great, clearly proving that I am my own worst critic. Of course, my first problem is timeliness; I say I'll show up at one, but since I'm not going to work I have a tendency to sleep in too late and not care about being late- that probably won't change any time soon, but on the up side: I always give myself way more time than I need.
Everything went pretty well as far as the preparation was concerned; I had a good enough idea of what needed to be done in what order, so there was no real hold-ups or problems with organization. 
The big problems were: I didn't drain the fennel quite enough or chop it fine enough so the Sformatto was a bit crumbly and wet, I had the oven about fifty degrees too warm so the roast pork was dry - too dry for forgiveness, garbanzos for the soup weren't tender enough, and the ricotta mentuccia was too dry to absorb the spices - so it was kind of bland; apart from these nitpicks the only downside is that the meal was not in organized courses as much as it was just a smorgasbord with general direction doled out as people arrived, and unless everyone can be there at the start of the dinner that is probably the way that it will stay for a good long time.
I was going to throw the milk that I used to braise the fennel for the Sformatto away but Zhu Zhu is diabolically opposed to wasting anything- no matter the worthlessness of it, so we had even more bread than the double batch of fococcia that I had initially made - and actually the fennel flavor in the milk added quite a nice if not extremely subtle touch to the bread. There was lots of bread, and in spite of the fact that Miki brought one of her friends from work there was still enough to go around quite comfortably.
The most unfortunate part of the whole eating experience was that there was just too much happening on the same plate - so it was difficult to focus on a specific 'course' before moving to the next one. Anyways, I remember the risotto and the soup getting the most positive comments. Unfortunately I didn't get photos of all of the finished dishes, and more unfortunatelier, I didn't write this post until nearly two weeks after the fact. All in all, though, it went over rather well in my opinion.
The night didn't actually end until about 3:30 am (which is as it should be as far as I'm concerned, but not quite so much so in everyone else' opinion), as we stuck around to play Puerto Rico and drink very strong coffee and eat cantucci. This coming dinner we'll try to get the dinner over a little earlier so that we don't have to stay up quite so late if the games take a long time.
