Warming up.... just a tiny bit.

Mardi Gras time down here.... and the sun has been warming things up a bit. Not much, but enough to be wearing three layers of clothing rather than four. Yesterday afternoon was warm enough for a light jacket, but it got cold last night again, and it's cold now as I type this at 9:30 in the morning. Hopefully, the sun will make it warmer this afternoon.

We went to dinner last night, at J & S's home. S is a wonderful cook, and makes a lot of Asian-style dishes. From scratch-- not frozen/prepared. She made "pot-stickers" for an appetizer, which were excellent. Then for a first course, she made egg drop soup. Also delicious, but a little hard to eat on those large porcelain Oriental-style spoons. I would've given anything for a soup-spoon last night.

For dinner, S made a Philippine-style noodle dish, similar to Oriental Lo Mein, filled with shrimp and vegetables. With that, she had a roasted ground meat loaf (ground chicken, not beef) filled with raisins and spices, served with a liver-sauce (which I tasted just a drop of). Also steamed white rice with all of that. Dessert was a Philippine recipe, a meringue cake filled with egg custard, all rolled up jelly-roll style. Very rich, very moist, delicious.

Dinner was wonderful.... dinner conversation was a bit strained. It wouldn't have been if just my husband and myself were there... the four of us have had very interesting, deep conversations in the past. Last night, they invited one other couple, plus another neighbor whose wife was out of town. There was just no common thread between all of us, other than that we live in the same community. (Dinner party rule #1-- the smaller the group, the more well-matched your guests need to be.) We'd get started on a topic last night and after the first couple of sentences, the conversation came to an end. Added to that-- S does her cooking for these dinner-parties at the last minute, so she was in the kitchen for most of the time, leaving her husband to carry on with the entertaining (which he isn't that good at unless he's on a subject he can carry, and the other three people there weren't interested in his topics).

I found myself acting as a hostess while S was in the kitchen, rather than a guest, and doing what I do at our own parties here to keep the conversation flowing and interesting. Except at our parties, I don't have to work that hard because we have a good mix of friends here all the time. Last night's mix of guests seemed to be like oil and water. But on the bright side (and there's always a bright side if you look for it)... dinner was delicious, and it was nice of J and S to invite us. It just felt like four hours of small talk, rather than four hours of interesting conversation.


I started to de-Valentine the house the other day. All the red hearts and cupids are packed away in their boxes till next January when I'll be unpacking them again. In their place are green shamrocks and leprechauns, and my little shamrock tree that I made last year. We've invited some friends for a lunch party on St. Patty's Day weekend. K and B will be here, along with R and C, and our neighbor J. I've been wanting to introduce J to those friends because they're all interested in (and talented in) art. So that will be a good mix. Not a big party, just the seven of us. We will all wear something green and bring something green. (Naturally green food, not mashed potatoes with green food dye.)

I've got green Mardi Gras beads that I will put at each place setting for that lunch-- those were a hit at last year's "green" lunch for St. Patty's Day. For the favor bags, I bought pretty shamrock pins on eBay for the ladies, and green mint-scented candles... and I will look in the bookstore and see what kind of books they have this year for St. Patty's Day. I found a great one last year-- "St. Patrick's Secrets," I think it was called, and everyone enjoyed that one. Can't go wrong with books.