Dinner High

Last night we had the pleasure of going over to a friend's parent's house for dinner. Actually, his parents are more like friends than anything, so we'll just say friend's house. The husband is retired but his wife still works. They are avid golfers, extreme oenophiles (they love them some good wine) and they are both ridiculously good cooks. I think to call them cooks would be an insult. They are both chefs. Together they make some of the absolute best food I have ever had.

Tom is famous for his ribs (I think I ate about 15 last night, this is the same ribmaster that got me in trouble at the house warming party in my earlier post). Now remember, I'm from St. Louis, home of some of the best bbq on the planet. I've had sweet and spicy bbq pork ribs in St. Louis. I've had tangy and hot bbq spare ribs in Kansas City. I've had bbq beef ribs the size of a little league baseball bat in Austin. And Tom's are right up there with the best I've ever had. And at a party with a lot of people they go fast. Now you understand why I was so selfish before.

Anyway, Tom and Lorraine host dinner parties as gifts (best idea ever, especially since they let you kind of pick the menu direction) and last night's party was a celebration of my MBA graduation. On the menu for the night:

Apps:
-ribs, ribs, and more ribs with bbq sauce that I swear has crack in it it's so addictive
-tomato, mozzarella and basil skewers
-carrots, celery and olives with Lorraine's famous homemade blue cheese dressing (ridiculously good)
-killer good cheese and crackers

The Main Event:
-filets so perfectly cooked you could cut them with a butter knife
-dirty rice with tons of seafood (scallops, shrimp, crab) and some sort of tomato sauce that was just insanely good
-salad with above-mentioned blue cheese goodness

Desert:
-vanilla ice cream and strawberries (ain't nothin wrong with that)

OK, now that I'm drooling again you get the picture. Add a bunch of really good wines in the mix (Au Bon Climat Pinot Noir, Margerum M5, and a host of other insanely good bottles) and you couldn't help but have a good time.

Tom and Lorraine also let you pick a few friends to have over, so we invited a few friends to join us. It's cool because we've been to a bunch of these dinners now, and no matter whose event it is it always seems to be the same people invited to dinner. We're all great friends, but I think it also has to do with the fact that we all love great food, great wine, and we all get along so well.

Everyone at dinner is also coming to the wedding, so the discussion inevitably turned to wedding plans. Page (my fiancee) and I had just approved and ordered our wedding invitations earlier in the day, so we were on a kind of wedding high. It's funny, wedding planning is stressful in some ways, but not in the ways that I thought or expected it to be. Invitations are the perfect example. As I've said before, Page is _particular_ about things, and I thought that the invitations would be a huge hurdle that would end up with me somehow sleeping on the couch and her still getting her way. But nothing tragic happened with the invitations (I probably just jinxed myself). We went to a couple stores together, then Page went to 179 stores by herself (sometimes I thank the Lord we have different work schedules), then we looked on line and found great invitations for a really great price. Having a beach wedding has some great advantages, and since we didn't want anything too fancy, we ended up getting the perfect invitations and not having to sell off any organs (I'm saving my spleen for the honeymoon).

Now I'm sure that in the whole wedding planning process there is some sort of cosmic evening out, so I'm guessing there will be other parts that I expect to go smoothly that will turn out to be nightmarish, but oh well, that's just how it goes I guess.

Everyone kept ribbing us because we were so giddy and happy at dinner. But that's part of this whole process. You start with the engagement, then after the engagement high wears off there's this beast in front of you; a seemingly endless list of things to do, people to call, things to order, places to go, and on and on. It can be really daunting, and now I see why people hire wedding planners, but that's just not us. It's just not us because we can't afford it, but it's also not us because we want this wedding to reflect who we are, not the fact that we can pay someone to put together a perfect party. Ticking things off that endless list gives you a sense of satisfaction that you can't really compare to anything else. It's euphoric and sad at the same time. It's awesome to have one more thing moved to the "done" column, but in a way it's one more part of the process that you won't share again. Something like creating invitations may not seem like much, but sharing that creative process with the person you love creates a great high and just cements the bond you have together. I'm sure it can go the other way too and be a complete disaster, but I've been lucky I guess. Knowing that that part of the process is done is kind of sad, almost like the day after Christmas, except you can't play with all your cool stuff.

Sitting at dinner with such good friends and talking and laughing about wedding stuff really made me take stock of my life and my decision to get married. We have some friends who were recently married after a VERY short time. Whether or not that was the right decision for them, I don't know and I can't judge. I've seen some marriages that started picture perfect and ended in disaster, and I've seen some that sound like a Greek tragedy waiting to happen and are still going strong. All I know is that sitting at that table enjoying a phenomenal dinner, laughing with some of my favorite people in the world, and looking over at the woman of my dreams, I know I made the right decision.

And this time I made her a drink and offered her ribs.