Just a small gathering with a few friends

I come from a family who are absolutely fabulous at entertaining.  Well, to be more specific, I suppose I come from a mother who is fabulous at entertaining.  Dinner parties and party-parties are always amazing.  Delicious food, fabulous decorating or table setting, flower, candles, music, and that perfect atmosphere.  My parents’ gatherings are kind of legendary.

And having helped out at many of these ‘events’, I now find I have a bit of a problem:  I’m not very good at doing things on a small scale.  I think I am.  I mean, these things always start small in my head.  They just have a way of growing. A little bit out of control.

But if people only knew how much I don’t let myself do, they would be amazed and just how not over the top I’m often being.

Case Study:   A couple of nights ago I had a group of people over for dinner.  One of my friends has gone back to uni, and after working harder than anyone I’ve ever seen at uni, they had just finished their final exam in their first semester.  We decided to celebrate, and rather than go out and spend money and be all tired on a school night we thought we’d be all sensible and not-over-the-top and just have a bunch of people over to my place. 

Of course, that meant we’d have to eat something, and I was kind of in a cooking mood (it’s been a little while since I’ve cooked anything from a recipe) so at 11am that morning I asked my friend what they felt like for dinner.  The reply:  “Um, actually, Mexican would be great! We could just have tacos.  Let me know what fillings I can bring”.

But, being a Munro (who only really let family ‘bring things’) I said ‘oh no, leave it with me.  I can whip up some tacos’.  But of course, within about 5 minutes of mulling things over in my head and looking online, the dinner went from tacos to Mexican salads with beans, rice, salsa, guacamole, Mexican steak and chicken enchiladas all made from very complicated recipes and sauces that (for example) involved roasting chillies and tomatoes as the first step.  And then Pavlova cups and fruit salad (aka 12 different fruits cut into very tiny pieces) and custard cream with lemon sorbet. 

And of course I only had about 2 hours between work, shops and people eating, so I spent most of that time ruing my tendency to bite off more than I could chew, and being incredibly grateful for the 3 angel friends who are also on university holidays and who thought it would be ‘fun’ to come and help me cook.  (I don’t know if they had realised just how happy I’d be to give them job after job after job after job in the kitchen).

The end result of course was a truly delicious meal (if I do say so myself), with a great atmosphere and a lively game of white-board Pictionary after dinner.  BUT, there was about 18 times too much food.

Amy: *glad-wrapping the vat of guacamole after dinner* Tammy, how many avocados did you use to make this?
Tammy: Um, 14. 
Amy: *laughing hysterically with a few other people* what were you thinking making this much guacamole? Did you think we’d eat it?! 
Tammy: Um, I was thinking “I hate it when we run out of guacamole”…)

BUT in my defence – I did not do shredded port and shredded chicken and roasted onions and corn with the dinner, as well as homemade bread rolls. And I did not hire chairs and tables so that we could all sit at the same table.

So really, I was quite resonable about the whole thing.  And everyone enjoyed themselves, so I would call the evening a success :)

xo Tammy

PS.  The guacamole is currently sitting in three separate (and large) tupperware containers in the fridge.  Last night when a friend wanted to hang out I managed to convince them that we should hang out at my place (so I could then force them to eat Mexican leftovers). Unfortunately they didn't eat as much as I'd hoped.  Not to worry though, I have another friend who wants to hang out tonight who will also (unbeknownst to them) be eating delicious Mexican food leftovers.

PPS.  You don't like guacamole, do you?  7pm tonight? my house?