Anatomy of a Dinner Party

I invited Richard and Annie to dinner because I love them and I wanted to do something nice to thank them for how wonderful they've been to me while I'm here. I'm not sure that subjecting them to my generally unreliable cooking skills qualifies as "something nice," but it seemed like a good idea at the time. So here's how the day went:

8:30-- crawl out of bed, have coffee, make cornbread.

10:00-- grocery store. Various ingredients purchased, including auxiliary bottle of wine. (R&A don't drink too much, but better safe than sorry.) This took much longer than anticipated, because I forgot to look up "rosemary" in the French-English dictionary before I left. (I bought something that started with 'r' and hoped for the best. And I was right. Score!) Also, evidently green onions don't exist here, so I had to get a regular onion. And "soup in a can"... yeah, not so much.

Wait in line for cashier for about 5 minutes, at which point she turns her service light off. Turns out that unlike in the U.S., where the extinguishing of the light means "everyone in line but no one else," in France it means "get in the back of someone else's line, sucker." Under normal circumstances, this would infuriate me, but as I'm down to 20 days here and now consider myself a tourist, I didn't care. I just got in the back of the next line.

10:30-- walked home. Created something similar to chicken broth from bouillon cubes and turned cornbread into something resembling dressing. More or less. They're French, so it's not like they'll know. (Despite the bravado, I was also contemplating the best method of ritual suicide should the meal fall apart.)

12:00-- bowl of cereal, Xanax, and a three-hour nap. Ah, that's better. Can I just explain the enormity of this? I am giving a dinner party (and I never cook) in which I prepare food with French approximations of American ingredients in a kitchen that is not mine. I don't know what the crap kind of pots and pans, utensils and whatnot exist in this kitchen. And I've detailed my issues with the stove before. To say I was nervous is the understatement of the universe.

3:30-- another trip to the grocery store. Buy final supplies: cheese, baguette, chicken breasts. And a pie. Technically I made a banana pudding last night, but there was a slight problem with the meringue (due to my lack of experience with this kind of mixer) and this morning I spent way too much time cleaning dried egg white off numerous surfaces, including a kitchen chair, the microwave and my iPod. When I leave the grocery store, it is raining. Hard. The bus zips past me. I walk home with groceries in the rain, just a wee bit cranky.

4:00-- clean floors. Embarrassed to tell you how long it's been since I've done this. And anyway, laminate floors are gross; I prefer carpet where the nastiness is ground into the fibers and one remains blissfully unaware of its presence. Miss Cake's Soviet-era "vacuum" (I use the quotes because I truly doubt the veracity of this claim. For all that it sounds like a space shuttle at lift-off, newborns suck harder than this thing.)

5:00-- shower. I spend the entire time calculating and recalculating when to begin cooking each dish. I am losing my mind. I am freaking out.

5:30-- have a whiskey. Dry my hair. Take the garbage out. Feel better.

6:00-- start watching a Season 1 episode of "Fringe" online but can't concentrate because I'm thinking about cutting potatoes. So I finally give in and head into the kitchen.

6:15-- scrub and cut potatoes (white and sweet). Coat with olive oil, salt, pepper and rosemary and toss in oven to roast.

Butterfly chicken breasts. (Oh my gawd, I just butterflied chicken breasts all by myself. I am awesome!) Stuff chicken breasts with cornbread dressing. Coat tops of chicken with olive oil, rosemary and Parmesan cheese. Throw into oven with potatoes, which are roasting nicely.

Sauté onions and mushrooms in olive oil. Add bouillon-approximated broth and reconstituted-from-powder "cream of poultry" soup. Reduce over heat. Result = tasty sauce.

7:15-- open windows because it's hot as all getout. Set table. Place baguette on table. Open wine. Pour sauce into bowl, potatoes into serving dish.

7:30-- Richard & Annie arrive. This demonstrates their cultural sensitivity. Normally French people would never dream of arriving on time (it's rude!) but they know I'm American and so they accommodate me.

We sit down in the living room. They have orange juice, I have another whiskey. (It's medicinal.) I serve dinner and they like it! They like it a LOT! I think I might cry. I break all French conventions by repeatedly saying "Help yourself, help yourself, help yourself." (This is not a French concept.) Annie asks me how I made the stuffing and I all but glow while I tell her. She takes seconds! We laugh and chatter nonstop. Life is good.

I throw my grocery store pie in the oven while I serve the cheese course. (I remembered the cheese course! I'm a pro at this!) After the cheese, I serve pie and make tea for Annie and coffee for Richard and me. Richard becomes my slave for life when I introduce him to the wonders of Bailey's Irish Cream.

We sit at the table for a while longer and continue to tell stories and I laugh until I can hardly breathe. Finally they take their leave; they walked over and will walk back. Richard shows me the new headlight he bought (the forehead lamp that miners wear) and I crack up even more.

10:00-- My first-ever French People dinner party is over, and it was fantastic. I am queen of the universe.

Only now I have to wash every single dish in the apartment. By hand. It takes an hour. But it was so worth it.

Photos of the aftermath: