dinner parties

The term "dinner party" seems so grown-up and stuffy to me. But man, oh man - do I enjoy them, as I have recently discovered.

In my move to State College I realized that it was high time I make it a point to build relationships with people. To be fair, I guess I have been doing this for a long time, but now it was time to step it up a level: be hospitable. I've been getting really good at meeting people for coffee...but certainly never in my home. Part of the reason for this is that I am a chronically messy person and my home is rarely in a presentable state. But...with a new place to live and a large bedroom in which to throw all of the clutter when people are going to come over, it is now more possible. ...And maybe, just maybe, I'm learning (through exciting experiences like The Fire...) that cleanliness and organization are important things and worth the effort.

About 10 months ago I drove with a friend to a place in West Virginia, and during our travels I complained about how there was no time for other people even though I wanted to be with them and build friendships. She pointed out that everyone needs to eat and suggested that eating with someone else would be a practical way to spend time with others but not terribly cramp my schedule. ...Very wise. Now, finally, almost a year later, I'm taking her advice!

I still haven't perfected this, because even though it seems easy enough to just eat and split, it seems like eating with another person or two automatically means that the meal will last at least twice as long as normal. I haven't done exact calculations, but the length of the meal-time seems to be directly mathematically correlated to the number of people in the dining party. My best guess is that one additional person makes the meal 2-times as long, and for each additional person I can plan to tack on about 15 minutes. ...So, for a party of 8, a meal that would normally take 45 minutes suddenly becomes a 3 hour ordeal. Fortunately, I only own 6 chairs, so the maximum time for a meal in my apartment will only be 2.5 hours, and that's not nearly so bad...although it still certainly wouldn't work if the goal was to still have a night left afterwards for being productive.

Another part of dinner parties that I have yet to perfect is the fine art of making everything be warm when it gets to the table. What I've read suggests that with a bit of planning one can time the cooking of all dishes in the meal to be done at about the same time and thus all be warm. I like this idea because I love planning and find it an exciting and fun challenge to figure out how I can coordinate all of the cooking steps to beautifully work together. I run into a few problems because my lack of cooking experience means that I often grossly under- or over-estimate how long it will actually take to prepare certain dishes, but I'm getting better as I cook more often. There are a few other tricks I've picked up along the way, including selecting dishes that are fine to sit in a warm oven without shriveling up or that retain their heat nicely. But one thing that foils my plans is the people. As usual, the one aspect I cannot control is the people... Will they arrive on time? Will they dawdle when I call them to the table? Will they "thoughtfully" bring something else to add to the menu that I then need to do final preparations for? Never know.

The funny thing with all of this eating-together that I've done here in State College is that...even though I wanted to have an activity that didn't at all mess up my schedule and dining together takes so much more time than dining solo, I find that I actually still have all the time I need to accomplish everything that is important. And slowly but surely I am able to value the time with the people much, much more than my own agenda.