Our gourmet dinners are always so much fun, but not always on time -- all six of us have ridiculously busy schedules and we fit in our monthly dinners when we can. That results in an occasional dinner being "out of month". Like last night!
Dawna and Robert's dinner was technically in November, but both Dawna and I were gone to the AAQ Retreats, then there was Thanksgiving and, frankly, the month got away from all of us. Given that December was equally frantic, especially with Dan and I leaving the end of this week, a Monday evening in December worked out just great....
Dawna and Robert's dinner was technically in November, but both Dawna and I were gone to the AAQ Retreats, then there was Thanksgiving and, frankly, the month got away from all of us. Given that December was equally frantic, especially with Dan and I leaving the end of this week, a Monday evening in December worked out just great....
Of the three of us, I think Dawna is the most creative with table settings, decorations and food presentation. She has a kazillion sets of dishes and all of the beautiful things to go with them to make wonderful, magical tablescapes. Her theme for this dinner was definitely holiday, with a pale teal and white color scheme and dishes featuring doves and words, such as "peace". What I always wonder afterwards is where the heck she stores all this stuff?
Another view of the table -- I mean, really, do you have room for a four foot long peacock in your kitchen cabinets?
The first course was a salad of cucumbers, shredded carrots and other goodies in a champagne vinaigrette dressing topped with perfectly sauteed sea scallops, accompanied by this sparkling white wine. It all worked together really well and, of course, Fay and I asked for the recipe....
I don't know why I took pictures of the wine rather than the food, but the second course was puff pastry filled and surrounded by various types of sauteed mushrooms -- portabello, button and shiitake.
Here you can see the beautiful plates and silver. The main course was chicken breast stuffed with prosciutto, basil and parsley, accompanied by carrots, zucchini and sauteed mushrooms.
Here you can see the beautiful plates and silver. The main course was chicken breast stuffed with prosciutto, basil and parsley, accompanied by carrots, zucchini and sauteed mushrooms.
The wine served with the entrees was one of Dan and my favorites from Consilience -- perfect with the food!
Dessert was "Penguin Cake", which totally fit the bird theme, right? Robert opened a Consilience Port with dessert.
To introduce you to the group, I took a few pictures after dinner. Since everybody seems to be either asleep or hiding, it looks like before dinner might have been a better bet. At the left is Dan, half asleep, and Dawna hiding behind the table......You can see Dawna's pretty coordinating napkins on the table....
That's Dawna's husband Robert on the right. Now, in our defense, each of us did have our share of 4 bottles of wine -- on a school night!
Looks like somebody is awake! Here are Leith and Fay Bergier, the other half of Bolts in the Bathtub, my local quilt shop, conveniently located just 3-1/2 short miles from my house. Leith does all the maintenance and tech work on the Berninas and Fay keeps track of all the bookwork involved in a busy quilt shop and Bernina dealership.
At the end of the year, everybody moves forward a month, so I'm doing January, Fay has February and Dawna does March -- we had some super foodie experiences in 2009; here's to 2010!
I am so into dishes and table settings, but like you mention where do you keep all the stuff? And special dishes don't come cheap! That looks like a wonderful table; the food looked great; and the company you shared it with looked, ahem well, they looked not too interested....:)
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