A Long Awaited Dinner Party

I have a long term blog friend, S., who lives

in Australia;

she and I have been emailing since about 2009, she's been

reading my blog I think since about 2008,

so a long time (she does not blog herself but emails

lovely encouraging emails and I treasure our correspondence!)

I sent her our Christmas card and letter this past year

and by January she was emailing me

to say that she and her sister R. were coming my way in May.

I was so excited!!!

So I said of course we must do a dinner party

and began planning...

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Appetizers before the meal

were pink-salted cashews and chocolate covered cherries

paired with yogurt cover cherries... 

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Here's the menu we had:

First course ~ mushroom soup:

See here for the recipe!

Second Course:

Roast Chicken, Potato, Onion & Goat Cheese Casserole

Roasted Beets, Salad, Fresh Cut Vegetables.

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In the far corner, you can see bright orange cut carrots

and a deep maroon , which are raw cut beets.

Mr. Husband loves his vegetables raw....

I roasted a chicken, 

having prepared it the day before,

and trussed it before roasting.
It's a wonderful dinner hosting secret to prepare
the chicken the day before, add more butter if needed
right before roasting and then enjoying the wonderful
scents of herb roasting chicken while
doing the rest of the dinner baking... 

Recipe here.

The lovely bottle of red wine was a gift 

from S and R who came to dinner!

The dishes used were my 

four white China plates, Johnson Brothers from England

with gold rims that I call my Theophany dishes.

Also used were the gold rimmed bowls I got during that time

and the two pretty bowls that Mr. Husband had found

some years before I knew him.

They set such a pretty table...

I roasted beets the way I have for years,

and I had found a clear balsamic vinegar to use again for them,

like years ago ~ see here for the recipe. 

It made such a pretty table!

Of course I used the silver plated cutlery 

Mr. Husband and I had found at the rummage sale

when we were first married.... 

A salad with shaved carrots and red peppers...

The thick pillar candle I got in Ottawa for

Mr. Husband's birthday party...

I wanted everything to be beautiful for it and I thank God

we were able to have it!

The Potato, Onion & Cheese casserole,

it's so creamy and warm and with the

fried onions with thyme,

a real winner!

Recipe here. 

It was a very satisfying meal.

And even better was all the wonderful dinner conversation...

We talked about so much,

the changes in churches and culture,
concerns about some of these changes,... 

...we talked of how many of these changes lead both my friend

Mr. Husband and myself to Orthodoxy, 

which is a Church Home that continues to feed us... 

We talked about books, Persian culture, traveling to see

culture and cultures, Elizabeth Goudge, Lewis and Tolkien,

Dickens, to mystery novelists including PD James,

the Brother Cadfael books, Amanda Cross and the riots of 1968,

of beauty, solitude, of history...

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It was most delightful;

what I would call a real meeting of the minds

and of ones that find themselves more closely aligned on so many levels

that had never even been touched on before...

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And for me I felt at home in a different way form them as well,

as they are from a Commonwealth Country like I lived in before

moving here, for me Canada, for them Australia...

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Before we had dessert, as in the third course of the evening,

we broke for a tour of our condo that I still think of 

in part more as an apartment, like apartments should be...

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We had a great time looking at icons first and last

enjoying our library and discussing various books there in...

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And then we went on to dessert...

I made the strawberry lemon cake

for the second time!

It turned out well, recipe here.

It was really fun to decorate! 

We also had our choice of gelatos....

and lastly, 

 the leftover strawberries with cream,

to top off the end to a lovely evening and 

dinner party.

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It was a dinner party and visit that I would of loved to have

again and again!