In Retrospect: Wednesday March the 25th, Dinner.

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.