if I never eat again…

The very best guests “to entertain” are the ones who come completely self-contained — in fact, though they might come to spend time with you under your very roof, it becomes questionable exactly who are hosts and who are guests.  This happens to us a lot AND WE LOVE IT!  Friends bring appetizers for Friday nights.  Loved ones bring all the fixin’s for lunch or for dinner.  Relatives come from foreign lands and cook their favorite national dishes in our kitchen!  We are SO spoiled.

The last two days took the “being guests in our own home” to unprecedented lengths.  (Well, not quite unprecedented – they’ve done this before.)  The Rose City Mixed Quartet came on Tuesday at noon, left the next day after lunch, and brought with them sleeping bags, pillows, towels and all other sleepover paraphernailia plus food for two lunches and one breakfast.  We had only to do Tuesday night dinner — and no clean-up.  WOW!

The menus went like this — sandwiches and all the accoutrements for Tuesday’s lunch, complements of Helen & Dale — which we set up outside for a glorious picnic, the season’s first.  Dinner (our contribution):  an appetizer of Dungeness crab, lasagna, tossed green salad, French bread and brownies from Cameron.  Breakfast,  aeblskivers* by Mark accompanied by thick-sliced ham and strawberries and green grapes. Lunch barbecued pulled pork sandwiches by Cameron (and husband Bill who, like the other spouses, was not among us) and broccoli slaw, followed by watermelon and the last of the brownies!

Their car pulled out around two o’clock but they were back at two ten to retrieve Cameron’s cell phone.  Nyel and I caught up on some emails and other paperwork (but alas I didn’t do a blog), couldn’t work up any interest in dinner, and were in bed by 7:00 p.m.  Conclusion:  It’s just exhausting to be the King and Queen — even for two days!

And did I say we loved! loved! loved! it?

*A word about æbleskivers– a Danish treat cooked in a special castiron pan (Mark brought two of them) which I would describe as a round, hollow pancake ball.  Break them open, fill them with butter and brown sugar or with maple syrup or with strawberry jam (we had all three options) and you are in Heaven.  Pure and simple.

One Response to “if I never eat again…”

  1. Cuzzin Ralph says:

    Dear Cuzzin Sydney, Those æbleskiver look delicious! But have you ever had the Danish dessert rødgrød med fløde? I’ve eaten it just once many years ago in Aarhus, Denmark. That dessert is so unpronounceable by non-Danish people that is was a common shibboleth among the Danish resistance during World War II. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GT_r%C3%B8dgr%C3%B8d_med_fl%C3%B8de.ogg

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