My weekend was fantastic, but now I need a weekend from my weekend. When I left work on Friday, I was mentally AND physically exhausted. With all the goings-on this weekend, I find myself mentally rested, but just as physically in need of a nap as ever.
On Saturday, Tom and I went to the Courthouse Farmer’s Market, figuring we’d get just some tomatoes and mozzarella and whatnot for lunch. But you see, Tom and I have been talking about trying to eat more locally-grown food, less meat from factory farms, that sort of thing. Not as a necessarily political statement, but more as an investment in better quality nutrition, better-tasting food, and keeping more of our dollars in our local (or at least regional) communities. I actually have a lot more to say on this topic, but I’ll save it for another time.
Anyway, the point is, we went in for caprese ingredients, and came out with something like $90 of produce. It started when someone had a bag of peaches. I LOVE LOVE LOVE farmer’s market peaches. And then we saw the berry farm’s stand. And the blackberries were the biggest and most beautiful-looking I’ve ever seen. And then as we were debating how many tomatoes to get, since there are just the two of us and we’re not home all the time, the farmer said, “These tomatoes will last 10 days. If they don’t, I will replace them two-fold.” That’s a strong statement. We bought the extra tomatoes. And zucchini.
But then we ended up with this giant sack of fruit, and the peaches were really ripe. We had to eat them over the sink, they were so juicy. So of course we can’t expect them to last the week, and we had this huge flat of cherries, blueberries, and blackberries so we decided on the only natural course of action…
Sangria party. But we couldn’t do it the same night because, of course, that was the night of my First Ever Professional Comedy Gig. I got all dressed and made-up and whatnot, and Tom and I headed out to meet up with Dawn for a little pre-show dinner. I had to duck out of dinner early because I had to work the door, so I headed into the room, where the guy who runs it suggested that I get up on the stage and get used to the light. The lights are always directly in your eyes, but this venue is a long, narrow banquet room that doubles as a comedy club, so the stage is at one end, and a really bright spotlight is at the other, and it literally feels like an oncoming train. So I was glad I acclimated myself to it.
But then, I stepped off the stage and headed toward the back of the room, eyes still adjusting to the darkness, when I noticed a couple of people sitting in the back. “Huh, that woman looks a lot like my mom…” and then the man with her lowered the menu from in front of his face.
My parents came down from Pittsburgh to surprise me and see the show!
Understand that this is a big deal- it’s a long-running joke in my family about how the Baxendell men hate to travel. My dad in particular is just not into the road trip thing. So it’s A Thing that he drove four hours to hear me do 7 minutes of comedy.
They hung out with us after the show, and then we took them out for brunch the next morning, which was really nice. It’s nice to hang out with them in my ‘hood.
Once they were on their way home, Tom and I had to clean up the house for the sangria-consumption. So Tom chopped fruit while I tidied up in the front of the house, and then he cleaned up the kitchen and dining room while I worked on the back room and the bathroom, and by the time we were done, the house was solidly Good Friend Clean- the floors could use a good vacuuming and the shelves could be dusted, but things were put away, and the kitchen and bathroom were both very clean, which are the two key things that might skeeve people out if they aren’t.
Holding a dinner party is always a challenge to our priorities. We have a lot of friends, and we love to have them over, but we’ve got a small place. Our table seats 8 when extended, but extending it tends to make the place feel even smaller since it blocks the hallway access to the kitchen and bathroom. It’s not a problem when we’re throwing a big cookout like we did for our anniversary, but when it’s too hot to hang out outside and we want to have a sit-down meal, it’s a real issue.
So as we’re cleaning the place up, we’re going over who we’ve invited, who we might like to invite, etc. And we got to a point where the conversation went like this: “Do we want to invite [so-and-so]?” “Well, we’ve already got 8.” “We do?” “Yep [rattling off names].” “Huh. Well, we’ll have to invite so-and-so next time.” “Yep.”
But I made lasagna (unfortunately mostly not from the farmer’s market, which is a shame because we get the BEST ricotta there), and we had that, and some shrimp some friends brought, and the zucchini, and salad, and of course the sangria… and then dessert.
Dessert was grilled peaches with mascarpone cheese, berries with chocolate whipped cream, and vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce.
Every time we cook for friends, I think we’ve had the best dinner ever. I don’t know if it’s short memory or that we just get better every time. But in any case, it was a good time, and we’re going to have to remember that sangria for the next party.
