Dinner parties & My Dining Room

This is what dinner looks like at our house.

Okay.  That's not totally the truth.  This is what our dining room table usually looks like.  In fact, its what it looks like at this very moment.

It is the dumping ground for papers and other items I'm not sure where to put or don't want to deal with yet.  It also doubles as my home office.  Right now, I'm working on a project of scanning in all a bunch old photos so now its covered with a borrowed scanner and boxes of pictures

Every once in a while, I get fed up with it and spend a few concentrated hours clearing it off.  Or, better yet, we have people over for dinner and we need the space.  The motivation of having a real dinner with friends inspires me to finally tackle the always buried dining room table.  Consequently, I decided that we probably need to have people over for dinner at least once a month (maybe every other week) so that my table doesn't go buried for 2-3 months at a time.

A few weeks ago, we had some good friends (Drew & Claire) in town for Claire's college homecoming.  We decided while the big boys were at Awana, it would be a good time to have an adults only dinner party.  We did included our littlest guy Caleb (who is too little for Awana) and Drew & Claire's twenty-month old daughter and two other couples.  After dinner, these two played quietly and watched a baby video.  Sadly, I didn't think to take a picture when they first arrived and the kids were fully dressed and alert.  Here they are in the process of getting into jammies and clearly getting glassy-eyed.

Jon made two kinds of lasagna rolls and a salad (He is the cook).  I made some fresh bread and a blueberry crisp (I am the baker). 

I was excited about making the blueberry crisp because it was a new recipe.  Even more exciting to me was that I had been given the opportunity to do recipe testing for one of my favorite writers, Shauna Niequist.  If you aren't familiar with Shauna's writing, I highly recommend her.  She has two books out (Cold Tangerines and Bittersweet).
 
I love, love, love Bittersweet.  I read it after a difficult season in our family life and felt so much of it resonated with me.  I love Shauna's honesty about life and her ability to be real yet ultimately hopeful through painful seasons.  I recommend this book to all my friends and I know that many have felt the same way that I did when reading it.  Seriously, I could go on and on about this book.  The things I've learned from it.  The ways it helped me put into words the thoughts and feelings I had been having.  It didn't hurt either that I got to attend both a book club and a catalyst breakfast at our church where she spoke about this book.  One of my favorite things that she had us do at the book club was to write a list of all the things that we don't do (and don't apologize for it) and the things we do "do."  You can't do everything and in a world where there is pinterest and moms comparing each other, its nice to write have the freedom to admit, I don't do that.  Its not my thing and I'm not gonna beat myself up about it.  See....I digress already. 

I also love how Shauna has found a deep, life-giving community through her monthly cooking club with her girlfriends.  After reading Bittersweet, some friends of mine & I began our own cooking club.  I loved our Cooking Club.  We had monthly themes, tried new recipes, got to make all sorts of things ours husbands wouldn't eat, and spent hours talking uninterrupted over delicious food.  Sadly, we only meet for a year or so before we had a lot of scheduling conflicts and took a break.  I'm hoping that I can be a part of another cooking club at some point down the road.

In addition to reading her books, I follow her blog (http://www.shaunaniequist.com/) and I get to "see" her regularly at our church where she often speaks or does announcements.  All of these things make me feel like I know her more personally than I actually do.  Really, when you read someone's blog when you don't know them personally, you feel a bit like a cyber-stalker. 

A few weeks ago, Shauna made a plea on facebook for some volunteers to test her recipes for her.  I know I'm not her only fan as the responses were overwhelming and within an hour, she was saying that she didn't need any more volunteers.  Her next book, Bread & Wine, is going to have lots of recipes in it.  I had emailed back right away and two days later, I discovered that I got lucky.  I was super excited--I mean, I love baking, I love reading, and I'm a huge Shauna fan.  Could this get any better?

The recipe is gluten and dairy-free so it was different from the crisp I usually make, so I was a bit skeptical.  The topping was great though.  I definitely plan to make it again.  And I cannot wait until the spring when her new book comes out and I can try some more recipes.

Last week when my friend Lindsey was visiting, James informed her that "my mom gets to practice making a recipe for someone famous who is making a book with recipes in it".  Apparently, even James picked up on my excitement.  Love that my 6 year old is bragging on my behalf!  Ha!