Dinner and a Movie

Today I invited a friend over for dinner. This gave me an excuse to mess around in the kitchen. I welcomed the chance to cook adult food for someone that might actually enjoy the meal and not complain if there were vegetables on the plate. I tried out some recipes from a Barefoot Contessa show on Food Network. I made Ina Garten's Company Pot Roast, Irish Soda Bread and Baked Potatoes with Sour Cream and Yogurt Dressing. Then, just for fun, I made my Grandma Gus' sugar cookies in the shape of four leaf clovers for St. Patrick's Day.

All that cooking meant a lot of dishes. I have a very small kitchen with an equally small amount of counter space. I had to do yesterday's dishes before I could even start cooking. Once the dishwasher was running, I started to put the pot roast together. I love trying out recipes from the Food Network, but these chefs clearly don't do their own dishes. After the pot roast was in the oven, I realized that I'd have to clean the kitchen before I'd have room to make anything else. So I unloaded the dishwasher and cleared off my counter. Next I made the sugar cookie dough. It has to chill for an hour before cutting and baking the cookies. Into the fridge it went and into the dishwasher went the mixing bowls and measuring cups. The dishwasher was now full, so I ran the it for the second time that day. I mixed up the sour cream and yogurt dressing. That only took one bowl, one measuring cup and one spatula, thank goodness. So I didn't have to clean the kitchen again before rolling, cutting and baking the sugar cookies. Again, not a dish-intensive operation, so I was able to move right on to the Irish soda bread. It was actually very easy to make, but did make another sinkful of dirty dishes. So for the third time, I unloaded and reloaded my dishwasher.

I had planned on having all my cooking and cleaning done well before my friend arrived, but this was not to be. I had been to the library a few days before and checked out entire seasons of several BBC mystery shows. Once I dropped the boys off at school, I came home and made a huge pot of tea and sat down to enjoy a television show. One show lead to a second and a third and before I knew it, I had watched an entire set of Foyle's War. My marathon cooking and cleaning session began well after I meant to start. Throw in time for the shower I had neglected to take earlier in the day and suddenly I found myself worried that dinner would be late. It was, but, lucky for me, my friend was coming from downtown and he was late as well.

After a very good dinner (if I do say so myself) accompanied by a great deal of wine and good conversation, I had planned to do the dishes one last time and go to bed early. Again, this was not to be. Theo informed me that his ipod was on the fritz. That was putting things mildly. I don't know if you've seen the flashlight app for the ipod, but that's what Theo's ipod looked like - a blank white screen with no sound. So I was up quite late trying various things to fix Theo's ipod. I gave up around 11:30pm and went to bed.