Dinner Party

I think this week has made me realise something; I think my daily happiness depends a lot on how much I read about food or cook. I visited my friend Simone on Saturday and while I was there I couldn't not think about baking cake! When we finally started baking the cake, I had the urge to bake two. So a disappointing brown velvet cake brown velvet because the red food colouring we bought produced a disgusting orange dye that became brown after baking and a carrot cake after I think I was pretty satisfied. I mentioned to my dad that I might be getting a bit obsessed with cooking and he said I should stop and work on my portfolio... :( Its probably the last thing I want to be doing right now. Why architecture.. whyyyyy

It's been a while since I've wanted to have a fully fledged dinner party going all out with the ambience, table settings, cutlery and most of all the food. However with my lack of friends it has been a bit difficult to do so. We had Kevin's and Davyn's family over last night for dinner. I had been planning for this dinner for almost a week. I like planning, that way I have time to get things in order and also be less stressed out. This time however I might have taken on more than I could handle. To be honest I woke up at 8 30 am and started preparing. You'd think that that would be more than enough time but there was so much to do and before long I was exhausted.

The gravadlax was done and in the refrigerator but the thing that took the most amount of time was the m'hanncha that I wanted to make, wrap in foil and paper and put into small silver board boxes for the guests to take home. After that was done I had to make the labels for the m'hanncha and the drinks. Seriously wayyyy too many things to do!

Generally I do not pay attention to the table settings but I thought I should do it this time. There aren't any more roses in the garden so Khayali brought the flowers and I cut a few branches off a a thorny green bush in the garden for the centre and lit two candles. I suppose that was enough.

The Menu

Spinach Salad with Fig and Goat's Cheese

Beetroot Gravadlax

Lamb Shank with steamed veggies

Lemon Mousse