Dinner Preps
Posted
Sat, 07/26/03
I spent most of the morning doing all of the little things in preparation for tomorrow night's dinner. I have to admit I enjoyed myself at first, but near the end I was becoming slightly irritable as I'm not keen about washing dishes.
First, I baked the Pumpkin Bread Ring in a spring-form pan and then proceeded to clean more than twenty large mushrooms, slicing off the caps and scooping out the flesh. The mushroom mix was finely minced along with onion, and then cooked with sweet Italian sausage. I sprinkled Romano cheese in the mushroom shells, and then scooped the sausage mixture back in, sprinkling a bit more Romano cheese on top. Tomorrow all I have to do is pour a bit of tomato sauce on the mushrooms and then bake them. The Pumpkin Bread Ring will need to be warmed after the meal tomorrow, which I'll serve with vanilla ice cream.
Next I took about four pounds of fresh green beans, cleaning them and snipping off the ends. I also threw in a handful of our own yellow wax beans from the garden. I pre-cooked a pound of bacon, draining the pieces before crumbling and storing them in a plastic container. Tomorrow I'll boil the beans, sliced fresh zucchini, and then fry the lot with the bacon, onion, salt and black pepper. This will comprise Green Beans with Zucchini.
I also made homemade garlic butter in advance. The makings for a green salad are prepared, ready to be thrown together. Tomorrow all we'll really have to do is barbeque the chicken and make the potatoes-in-foil that also go on the grill. It sounds like so much food for four people no less, but as Wilbert informed me – his eyes dancing with glee – we can have dinner for several days on the leftovers. Besides the mushrooms, I'll also be serving chips and dip as appetizers.
This morning at the store, we purchased two bottles of wine: Delicato Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. Wilbert also snapped up a six-pack of Corona beer to put on ice in the morning.
If we live through all of the cooking and clean-up, I'll be sure to blog all about it.
*POSTSCRIPT 07/27/03: I'm beyond the point of exhaustion, and our dinner hasn't even started. Crazy, but true. This is due to my obsessive cleaning habits, where nothing is ever good enough, or clean enough. The food is ready to go, but I've been flying all over the house wiping away dust, dirt and any shadows of smudge, driving Wilbert crazy in the process. I've worn myself out along the way, and now I'm ready to drop in my tracks. But I'm still looking forward to having Sheila and Joe here, and finally having a "formal" dinner in my home.
*Related Blog Post: Spewing Ice Cream (Monday, 07/28/03).
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