When I was younger, eating with friends simply meant sharing a meal. If we wanted to do something special, we might make a Jamie Oliver as he was all the rage then. The focus, however, was on the company and having a pleasant evening with friends. Dinner was just a practical moment. Well, it’s changed. Nowadays, if you are not a bleeping gourmet chef, you might as well give up. When did the focus move from guests to food? And can we please get the focus back to our guests again?
I was never much of a cook. There were a few recipes that I managed okay-ish, but when our children were still babies, they didn’t care about more than pureed carrots or pasta and frankly, nor did I. My husband quickly learned this and had his main meals during lunch. In restaurants.
But when we moved to Luxembourg, we had to build a new social life and one way to do that was by inviting people over for dinner. As I was aware of my lack of talent for cooking, I found it nerve wracking. Add to that the fact that Luxembourg has the second-highest number of Michelin-starred restaurants per capita, and you understand I was crippled by fear.
With new people, you have to get to know them. In order to get to know them, you must talk to them. But talking and cooking is one combination of activities I am incapable of doing. So, I chose. I picked the company over the food and however much my husband and I always enjoyed the company, that did not always end well in the food department.
Most common ‘mistake’ was my leaving out a certain element. Or rather, an ingredient. We’d have some nice meat, vegetables and rice and then I would find the vegetables in the fridge the next day. Or even on the kitchen counter. Staring at me. Waiting patiently for me to put it on the table. But I would not see or remember it. Still, this was all quite innocent.
Less excusable was when we had friends over for whom I had prepared a delicious casserole with pork. It was pieces of pork in a dish, covered in a delicious sauce (I had finally mastered a few success dishes). Just before they came, we realized that these friends did not eat pork. My husband quickly drove to a supermarket to buy chicken while I scraped the sauce off the pork, threw out the pork, put the chicken in the dish and covered it with the same sauce that I had just scraped off the pork…
However, the worst experience was when we had a couple over for which I was already more nervous than usual because he was a fan of star rated dining experiences and she was an ex-girlfriend of the King of the Netherlands. They were used to a certain ‘class’. I had gotten my period that day and I discovered this on the toilet that is also our guest toilet.
It was there that I had taken off my underpants, sort of washed them out and left them there to quickly run upstairs to change. Then I went on with the preparations for that evening. Completely forgetting the world around me as ‘dinner stress’ kicked in. It was a disaster. Again, focusing on the company, I left the meat in the oven for a tad bit longer than the recipe indicated. By the time it was on our plates, it was ready to be used by a cobbler.
But it wasn’t until the next morning that I decided to give up on dinner parties altogether: I went to our ‘guest’ bathroom to discover my dirty underwear lying in the corner of the sink. I died a little bit and I hid. I actually hid in our own home…
So, how about bringing the focus back to the guests, enjoying a bag of crisps for all I care, having great conversations and creating meaningful experiences instead of the most embarrassing moments.
