August Pot-luck Dinner

For the past three days, I've been preparing for tonight's pot-luck dinner with our friends here in the hills.... the days of preparation may seem like a lot of work, but the end result is a flawless party with every little detail set up and ready to go. We can always tell when a party is a hit-- everyone just sits and talks and isn't at all in a hurry to leave after they've had dessert and coffee.

Coffee? No coffee tonight..... the outside temperature was 112 degrees so no one was in the mood for a hot cup of coffee before, during, or after dinner. (Our Clear Lake friends would practically clean out my 40-cup coffee urn, no matter how hot it was.... so I'll have to remember to leave that urn up in the cabinet for parties here.) Desserts were delicious tonight.... pineapple cake ("Have two pieces-- it's healthy... it has fruit in it!"), pecan pie, and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Our neighbor A brought the home made cookies in a cute little basket lined with pretty fabric.

Food at a pot-luck is always good.... and we had a lot of great dishes on the counter.... a perfectly sliced pineapple (with the leafy-top standing up in the center of the serving plate), vegetable casseroles, a crock pot filled with tiny meatballs in gravy, a tossed salad with everything good under the sun in it, fried chicken, pasta salads, cold vegetable dip and chips, deviled eggs (there will always be deviled eggs at these parties because mostly everyone has chickens).... and I've forgotten the other dishes...... I'm starting to fade as I type this at one o'clock in the morning.... it's been a long hot day.

Everyone went home with Ghirardelli chocolate bars wrapped up in polka-dot cellophane bags (those bags have become my party-favor trademark-- the polka-dots make everyone smile).... and while I was cleaning up the kitchen, dining room, and breakfast room tonight, I was thinking about the Halloween party we will definitely be giving in late October. I've already taken out my stash of Halloween magazines (I read through the same ones year after year, adding maybe one or two new ones.... lots of great ideas)...... and the Halloween decorations will be coming out of the closet as soon as Labor Day has been here and gone.

While we were all enjoying ourselves here in the hills, my cousins in NY were preparing for Hurricane Irene...... batteries, bottled water, food that doesn't need a fridge or an oven (in case the power goes out), extra cat food, extra everything.... they're gearing up for the worst and we're all hoping for the best. We were talking about that hurricane at the party tonight... how it seemed surreal that a storm like that would be heading so far up the east coast.

High winds, pouring rain, high tide, a slow-moving hurricane.... not exactly a good combination. Towns that we visited when we went up to NY a couple of weeks ago are now being evacuated because they're too close to the Atlantic Ocean. High-rise apartments in NYC-- people were told to leave because of super-high winds on those upper floors, and the possibility of glass shattering from all those city-view windows. Where on earth do all of those people go? And I can't even imagine getting out of NYC during an evacuation....... it was hard enough to get out of Houston a few years ago when we had to evacuate from our old house as Hurricane Ike was heading into the Gulf.

I'm hoping that the storm up there veers off into the ocean... away from family and friends... away from the city, the Island, just away.....