Of Food, Cleaning Up and Panic

So the Fellow and I had our first dinner party last night. Needless to say, I was the one hyperventilating all through the day, cooking, tasting, cleaning, supervising (the maid), re-tasting, organising and trying to get the Fellow away from this computer long enough to help out some. The Fellow, on the other hand, dusted off the bottles of alcohol, made sure the beer was refrigerated and checked if there was enough ice to last through the night. Yes, he did help when asked (like grating a whole tin of cheese and getting the crockery out) but like he said, at one point I was creating work for him, just to keep him involved! Eventually I let him be, and just demanded he shave and change into something presentable for the evening.

Why was I so worked up about a simple dinner? Well, to begin with, we’ve never had a party at home, so that was a little scary. It’s surprising how much stuff gets spread around the house and how much I sounded like my mom when I was putting things away. As I ran around the house, organising and tidying up, the Fellow had only one thing to say (which he yelled from his den while taking a break from Mass Effect 2): lock all the rooms so people don’t go in there, and this way you won’t have to clean anything up. Keep them contained within the living room, dining room and garden he said. And he ended his monologue with “my house, my rules”.

Once I got past the Fellow and his gyan (by simply not listening anymore), I started worrying about the food. I’ve never cooked for anyone besides my immediate family (who unfortunately had to live through my experimenting-with-cooking-stage of life) and the Fellow. And since, for the past year, I’ve been cooking for only two, I had next to no idea how to cook for more people. This obviously meant second guessing myself and wondering if what I made would be enough for everyone.

Well, as it turned out, I could have invited another 8 people over for dinner, and still have food left over [Note: The Fellow, who hadn’t taken a look at how much I’d cooked till after the party was over and we were cleaning up, still hasn’t stopped laughing].

And so, even with all the pre-party nervousness, behaviour resembling the Energiser bunny, last minute checks on everything (including the Fellow), a 10 minute window of panic (when no one arrived at the designated time), and a refrigerator full of food at the end of it all (not to talk of aching feet), my first dinner party was a huge success.

I’m now a fully functional fauji wife!