Food + Friends = Fun

Last Night
Our friends/neighbors Chuck and Reba and their kids Madeline and Jack came over for supper last night. We had Madeline and Jack over to play and eat supper with us a while ago to free their parents to attend parent/teacher conferences at school; and when Chuck and Reba came by to pick them up again afterwards, we decided that it had been too long since we'd all had a get-together, so we scheduled Friday's supper.

Susan and Abigail prepared a layout of crudités: radishes, cucumbers, celery, carrots, red peppers, yellow peppers, and orange peppers with ranch dip; and sliced pears and apples with caramel dip. Susan also made three huge pizzas, and the kids drank fruity beverages while the adults drank beer and wine. Susan made brownies for dessert and served them heaped with Schwan's vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup.

The food was terrific; the kids had a great time playing together, as always; and the adults enjoyed visiting and joking (Chuck and Reba are hilarious). However, I had been under-the-weather all week as well as under-rested due to my staying up extremely late each night in an effort to get all my work done for school. My body must have decided that "enough was enough" by the time last night rolled around--at one point in the evening, I could barely keep my eyes open any more! When the host disappears for a span of time and his daughter reports that he's sleeping on his bed, the keen guest takes that as a clue that it's time to gather the kids and head home. I don't think I exhibited great hosting right there--how embarrassing. Thank goodness they're such close friends!

Tonight
Susan and I had supper with another set of friends, Deana and Jim. They invited us and several others over for their second annual pre-Thanksgiving deep-fried turkey potluck supper (remember last year's event?). Susan and I were the first to arrive, so we got to sample some homemade blueberry wine that Deana opened to share with us. After everyone got there with their dishes for the spread, we ate: turkey, ham, tossed salad, vegetable salad, coleslaw, cranberry fruit salad, fresh grapes, li'l' smokies in barbecue sauce, cheese cake, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and blueberry coffee cake (you just never know what all will show up on the table at a potluck).

A lot of the other attendees are our friends by virtue of their being my coworkers, and several of them were involved in the recent community theatre production that Susan and I attended (remember?)--so we had plenty to visit about throughout the evening. They're an educated and humorous crowd; the topics that we covered in our conversation ranged from which English translation of Homer's Greek epic The Odyssey is the best to which male movie stars qualify as "hot" to which comes first in a relationship: friendship or love. An evening spent with those friends is always an interesting one.