Approximately every five years I get it into my head to throw a dinner party.
I'm not sure how it happens - there's a gap in conversation with friends needs filling and suddenly I find I've invited people around.
As I say, it doesn't happen often and the last time I did this was in 2007. Maybe it takes me five years to recover from the stress? In retrospect that one was a success and I feel more confident of my abilities now.
I don't know many people here but we live on a cul-de-sac where a few of Tim's colleagues are also based and we've been to dinner with a lovely couple on occasion. So that was a good start and I put the word out for a 'do' and started my list-making.
I like lists. I am very good at making lists. What I'm not so good at is crossing things off those lists.
First list: who to invite and who is coming. After I got past eight confirmed attendees I realised it couldn't be a dinner party as we don't have enough chairs. It would have to be a buffet. This is good and something I'm familiar with. Mum used to hold regular buffet parties. There would be twenty people coming. Eek!
Second list: what food to serve, and therefore, what food to make. I'll come back to this.
Third list: the Shopping List. No, not just one. There are things I have to buy in bulk; ingredients for make-in-advance dishes; items that can only be bought the day before at the earliest; drinks have to be bought from totally separate shops. And so on. Of course the shopping list is dependent upon the menu: see above...
With a few weeks to plan I spent many a happy, but frustrating, evening poring over recipe books, discounting each and every dish as I realised the ingredients were nigh on impossible to find here. That may sound dramatic but it's true. The two supermarkets I regularly use are stocked mostly with ready meals. Certain items we can find easily in a British supermarket either do not exist here or are found in specialist shops. For instance, meat is very expensive indeed and the local shops stock mostly small numbers of pork chops (I couldn't include pork on my menu) or skinny chickens.
Another example is curry paste or powder. Thankfully, I decided to do a trial run of a curry dish I wanted to serve. The only curry powder and 'sauce' I could find was disgusting! I ended up paying way over the odds for the real stuff from KaDeWe, the allegedly posh shop here.
Lateral thinking was in order. Tim and I took a trip to a cash and carry type store - Metro - so I could see what was available and work a menu out around that. It worked to a certain extent - when we returned to do the Big Shop some items were no longer in stock!
Eventually I had a doable menu and started to cook and create. This invoked the fourth list. This was a strict timetable of what to cook on which day, where the recipes could be found and so on.
I spent pretty much the entire week cooking and cleaning, cleaning and cooking. All interspersed with looking after Kita and with Tim and Rhiannon returning from Florida.
By the Saturday of the party I was exhausted! But due to some singularly bad planning on my part I had to spend all that day making even more dishes. I should have planned more that I could cook ahead but most things needed doing on the day. Won't do that again.
A couple of dishes didn't happen as I literally ran out of time, but there was more than enough to go around.
My creations did not look as good as these. Photo courtesy of Kalificado
It seemed to be a success. Food was eaten with relish - people were very kind and complementary. Fireworks were discovered in the basement and set off. The neighbours couldn't complain as they were all here! Kita behaved exceptionally well and was much fussed. Rhiannon had friends to run riot with. And I don't think I poisoned anybody!
When people left at the end of the night I morphed into my mother and insisted they take leftover food with them. People travelled home clutching boxes of canapés and fruit.
I won't leave it so long next time (even though it took me a while to recover!). And I will do some much better planning too so I'm not stuck in the kitchen away from my guests while I bung things on skewers.