Dinner partying the nights away...

I've been so busy entertaining I've had no time to post. Sorry. I'll try to be better in the future.

Since passing my quals, I've felt the weight of social obligations pressing upon me, and decided to throw big dinner parties and clear them all up as quickly as possible. So twice in ten days I've pulled out the oven mitts and gotten busy. The first week I kept it simple and made a big pot of soup for the main course, something I'm usually loathe to do because soup just doesn't seem fancy enough to carry a meal. But Julia Child's Soup au Pistou (I'm sure all you French speakers will be happy to correct my spelling) is really quite a killer recipe. It's just a simple pot of vegetables: potatos, onions, carrots, green beans, and canned white beans boiled in water. Then you add the carbs: a handful of broken spaghetti and a couple of pieces of dry French bread, broken into pieces. While that finishes boiling, you make the pistou, which is the French version of pesto: a lot of fresh basil, garlic, parmesan, and tomato paste. Add that in at the last moment, and you have a heaven in a pot. The guests had a good long discussion about the flavor umami, which this soup has in abundance, thanks to the parmesan.

The highlight of the meal seemed to be the long sesame breadsticks (you know, the kind that look like large cracker chopsticks) served upright in glasses around the table. Sigh... I don't know why I try to impress people with my oh-so-fabulous cooking when I could serve them each a package of sesame breaksticks and wine they'd be just as happy.

The second meal was more work: ten people, tapas. The idea was the tapas would be easier on me, because it's just one course. In the end it didn't much matter, because ten people require a lot of food, no matter how few courses you have. I tried to have a mix of hot and cold (for variety and so I wouldn't be freaking out frying six things ten minutes before the guests arrived), and the menu was: tortilla espanola, fried potatoes with garlic aioli, tapenade and bread, apricots with rosemary goat cheese, chickpea salad, and a blue cheese-almond green salad, followed by oranges in simple syrup, arroz con leche, and flan. A completely vegetarian, almost gluten-free, kosher meal. And pretty yummy on top of that.

Now I must get back to my pressing concerns of the week: transcribing audio interviews and trying to re-die my hair. My now blue hair needs to turn to a normal color as soon as possible. I just realized I need a new passport, and I refuse to be immortalized (well, immortalized for ten years) in blue.