Dinner party guests!

When you have a dinner party made sure you invite the right people. Here are some of the disasters I have had over the years ( in vague chronological order)!

• Members of the family who weren't speaking to each other! Makes for a tense dinner party, believe me!


• Friends who, unbeknown to us at the time, were on the brink of splitting up and spent the whole evening sniping at each other!


• A friend who drank a whole bottle of Drambuie and went to sleep during coffee!


• Friends who were wide awake at 4a.m. and showed no sign of going home even though my husband was actually snoring in the arm chair by then!


• A guest who announced they were vegan after the meal was on the table!


• A lady who I realized was Jewish after I had served pork to her!


• A lady who said it was a good job she had bought her indigestion tablets with her! I don't think she knew she had said anything tactless!


• Friends who bring along other friends without warning, after the table is set and hope I don't mind. So I have to unset the table and open out another leaf and re set it and eek out the food.
• Friends who insist on coming into a small kitchen and chatting while you are quietly in panic dishing up mode and get under your feet!
• A lady who was so involved in her carreer she talked about it all night without pausing for breath and thwarted all attempts by other guests to talk about anything else.

But I still love cooking and catering for friends!

Take a look at our website for everything you might need to set your table.

>Eat, Drink and Be Merry

Inviting people to a dinner party

Food is very much in the news at the moment as we all try to economise and juggle the budget. Lots of little luxuries have had to go in order to pay the gas, the electric and the petrol bills.

Yet it is still possible to have a great time. Instead of dining out, dine in! Invite your friends and give a dinner party. It needn't be formal and stuffy. Just set your table and make it as nice as you can, have something to drink and prepare a meal and relax and enjoy the evening.

Hopefully you will receive an invite from each of your friends and you can make it a regular thing.

There are lots of little tips for making a successful dinner party and ensure everyone enjoys it.

First tip: make sure your guests will get on well together! So obvious, but I have had disasters over choosing incompatable guests!

see the Cutlery and Catering website for lots of cutlery items and ideas

>Eat, Drink and Be Merry

Everybody's grumpy!

We went out for lunch! The whole family was grumpy except for my husband and grandson.

My son in law had been ill so there was an excuse for him being tetchy.

My grandaughter is only two and decided there was no way she was going to sit on her seat and my youngest grandson was grumpy because it must have been his turn to "play up"! ( I am pretty sure the three grandchildren have a rota for this! )

I was grumpy because my cutlery was dirty and when I complained they replaced it with no apology and I was grumpy with my daughter because when she asked for water and was given a choice between tap water (our Derbyshire water is wonderful!) and bottled Italian water she chose bottled!

My daughter was grumpy because she was struggling with my grandaughter and I gave her a lecture about her carbon footprint.

In the middle of all this grumpiness my husband and eldest grandson were blissfully unaware of anything except their conversation about football and cricket.

It seems to me that dining at home is much nicer:

1. You just put a jug of tap water on the table


2. Children "playing up" can be threatened with banishment from the dining room.


3. Son in laws who aren't well can go and have a lie down.


4. You know your cutlery is clean!


5. It is cheaper!

For all sorts of tips on laying the table and cooking take a look at our website

Eat, Drink and Be Merry

OOOooooooh Mr. D'Arcy!

It rained all day and, living in Derbyshire, we decided to go to another stately home. This time it was Sudbury Hall where lots of the scenes from "Pride and Prjeudice" were filmed.

I had read the book (I am an avid reader!) and seen dvd and wanted to visit the house.
We were given a special preview look around and allowed over barriers etc to look closely at the Grinling Gibbons carvings, shown some of the secret drawers in cabinets etc. It was fascinating!
My husband loves long- cased clocks and saw them in one room after another so was in his element.....we both loved the dining table set with beautiful china and silver cutlery with mother of pearl handled knives! In the kitchen were knife sharpeners and cleaners! What a job it must have been before the days of stainless steel blades. (You can still buy beautiful cutlery here but without the hard work!) You can still set your own table so that it looks beautiful. Click here to see howto lay a table correctly.
Afterwards I tried to persuade my husband to watch the dvd again with me. He persevered for a while but then said it was "too twittery!"
Oh well, we can't all like the same things!
movies

Eat, Drink and Be Merry



<

Does and don'ts when they go away

A few does and don't's when they go to university

Do

• keep their bedroom just as it was for a while so they can move straight back in during visits home for a while



• be ready to listen when they phone and be prepared to phone them back because they won't be able to afford to top up their phone



• expect them to contact you quite a lot at first.





• expect them to change and grow up while they are away.

Don't

Allow them to come home just to do their washing and leave you with the ironing - you are not a laundry service

Be tempted to throw all their junk out of their old bedrooms and revamp it - not for a while anyway.

Be suprised if eventually they come home less and less - it means they are getting more independent.

Don't be suprised if they decide to go overseas for a while at the end of the academic year or at the end of their course - just be delighted for them.

Don't let them pinch lots of items from your kitchen - buy them a Student's kit instead!

>Eat, Drink and Be Merry

Nine things you miss when they go away....

Lots of parents will be sending their offspring off to university soon. I've been there, done that and got the tee shirt.

This is what I missed when they were away:

Daughter

• being told when something I wore did not suit me or that I looked okay in something - an honest opinion.



• her friends visiting.
  
  
• listening to her point of view and realising she could possibly be right



• the occasions she took over the kitchen and cooked for us

Son

• the life went out of the house ( he was the last to leave)!


• his awful music


• his friends


• his humour


• listening to his point of view and realising he could possibly be right!
  

The advantages were:

• You don't have to pick wet towels off the bathroom floor


• No one spends hours in the bathroom


• You don't have to listen to pulsating music


• You don't get told to "Get a life.."


• No one rolls their eyes up to the ceiling when you point out the differences between your youth and theirs!


• You don't know they are out and haven't arrived home yet so you don't lie awake listening for them to come home!

The other thing we found was that items used to disappear from our kitchen and end up in theirs! We put together a students' bargain set to start them off and this could maybe mean you can still open a tin when you need to!