Turned out to be a lovely little dinner party. I had good friends and neighbors, Leslie and Dennis R.and new friends, Rosemary and Spanky D.
Having neglected to do anything until the day of, I hustled to clean the house, buy the food and wine, set the table, cook, and so on. Spanky is an amputee and uses a wheelchair, so I rearranged the furniture slightly to accommodate.
Got a delicious roast pork--uncooked, but in a kind of vacuum container. I picked one with Italian seasoning, in honor of the heritage of three of my four guests. I've had these for company before, and everybody seems to like them a lot. Added baked potatoes, banana bread, and sides of cranberry apple relish and crystal pickles. Leslie brought a good broccoli/corn/something else casserole and Rosemary brought a chocolate tofu pie, plus a nice bottle of wine.
When my company arrived at 5:00 (I like to have nibbles and drinks for about an hour, then dinner at 6:00.) Had just almonds (regular and spiced), pretzels, and grapes for appetizers, along with wine (Spanky had a beer). I prefer to keep the appetizers ordinary and not too filling, as I think people sometimes eat too much of them to fully enjoy dinner.
Everybody seem to like the meal, but it occurred to me I should have added a vegetable, maybe glazed carrots or something. Will next time I have a dinner party.
We stayed at the table for some time, talking politics and the downward spiral of the country. All of us deplored the extreme nationalism (read "worship of the military") that carries a whiff of Nazi Germany and seems to be growing all the time. Frankly, none of us are very optimistic about where we're headed.
They stayed until almost 9:00--in these parts, practically the middle of the night--then said goodnight. I can't stand to go to bed without cleaning up, so did that and it was past my usual when I turned in.
Lovely day and now I need to turn my attention to my house guests from London, here soon--yippee!