Suzy Homemaker

Since acquiring a dining room table and four vaguely matching chairs (and since finally getting a paycheck that allows me to buy more than cereal and milk), I've been meaning to have some people over for dinner. So I did! Getting up in the morning and spending the day cooking and baking is something that, just a few years ago, I never in a million years would have imagined I'd find enjoyable. But after a week of getting up at 5, and getting home at 6, it's awfully nice to have something else to do that's engaging and creative and actually produces a tangible, practical result. Not that teaching isn't those things in its own way, but physically making something, especially something that you can then enjoy with friends, really is kind of meditative sometimes.

I made crispy fennel bread sticks first. The recipe is from Chico Hot Springs Resort in Montana, which wisely publishes a cookbook. (They also have an outdoor hot spring pool and some of the biggest freaking sky you've ever seen.) I also made carrot gnocchi, which I had to attempt twice after failing at pureeing carrot, but which were infinitely worth it. Plus ribbony zucchini with basil and lemon, plus a lemon cake with a glaze that I had to improvise because I didn't feel like buying a bottle of limoncello so I could use a tablespoon of it. Yes, I'm a Food&Wine magazine whore. But I'm totally okay with that. One of these days I'll have the sickest cooking skills ever and will be able to whip up recipes out of thin air, but until that day comes...foodandwine.com it is.

Although my plates are mismatched sized, my glasses are mismatched shapes, and we used paper towels for napkins, the table looked pretty sexy:

We stayed up till almost one talking about Israel and creationists and the problems with our public education system, and probably some other things that I should remember but don't.

And so by Sunday morning the table looked sexy in that rumpled, bleary-eyed, morning-after kind of way:


And I've still got leftover cake. Win, and win.