Sam's comments...38 days and counting!
Last evening, we had some neighbors over for a dinner party. We get together with our neighbors often. We share the hosting and everyone brings something. When we set this date, we requested that this particular get together be for adults only. Two of the couples have children. Don't get me wrong, we love children; however, it is nice at times just for the adults to be together, having adult time, and not being interupted by children.
Bob and I have been entertaining for years and we love it. Early in our marriage and careers, we invested in Waterford crystal. We have a 10 piece place setting of crystal along with many other pieces. We set a great table for a sit down dinner. We seem to be the "exception" in our circle of friends. It seems like no one else sets a "formal" table anymore. Perhaps we are showing our age?
The main event last night was the opening of a huge bottle of wine we have had on hand for about 5 years. It was a 1999 Round Hill Cabernet Souvignon. The bottle was equivalent to four bottles of wine. We researched on the Internet for the proper time to decant the wine. We were thinking because of its age, it should be decanted for a couple of hours. However, to our surprise, it was just the opposite. Young wines should be decanted for hours and older wines are usually decanted just to get out any of the sediment. So we opened the wine about one-half hour before our guests arrived. Take a look at the size of the cork!
The first course was sparkling wine with a smoked salmon platter with all of the fixings. This was provided by Ian and Stacy. Then we sat down to dinner with a great spinach salad with two homemade dressings provided by Lydia and Randy. Lydia made a raspberry vinagerette and a dijon mustard, poppie seed and honey vinagerette. Bob and I made a wonderful traditional shephard's pie with lamb, spicy green bean casserole, baked sweet acorn squash, and bread. The cabernet wine was very tasty and excellent with the dinner. It was dry, earthy, and smooth.
After some mingling, playing billards, and a nice roaring fire in the fireplace, we had wonderful cherry pie with frozen vanilla yogurt for dessert. The pie was provided by Kathy and Marvin. Once again, a good time was had by all and in this case...bigger was better! And, size does matter!
Your table is lovely. Before we sold stuff in Houston I had glasses for any wine or cordial. Dishes for this and that. I could set a nice table and need to since we were the home for a lot of the holiday dinners. And like you we liked to entertain. I sold them and now I can set a pretty table but one size wine glass is for everything. I love tableware and could be off on another collecting kick but I just don't have room to store it all. Dinner parties are still fun.
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