Simple Pleasures: Hosting Friends for Dinner
I tell you what. I am absolutely in love with cooking for friends and getting people together at my house. And for those reading this who’ve always enjoyed it, let’s just say this is a somewhat recent revelation of mine.
I used to stress out about having people over and it felt like work. The house had to be spotless. The dishes and napkins had to be perfect and the menu complex and “amazing,” and so on. I made it harder than it needed to be and in so doing made it exhausting and therefore rarely hosted.
In recent years- probably a combo of quitting alcohol and eating out less; embracing a vegan and then plant-forward lifestyle, I started getting into meal prep using plant based menus and a few new utensils for my kitchen like the Le Cruset pan and rad food processor among other things. A new and proper knife set, some cloth napkins, a newfound appreciation for produce (especially locally grown produce!) and a desire to up my game of nourishing my body as well as possible — led to more and more cooking and learning in my home kitchen.
…with that came some confidence that I could serve these foods to friends with good results.
The setting down of perfection as the goal and the embracing of authenticity instead allowed me to move away from caring about my house not being “perfect or spotless” and towards embracing the chance to connect with my fellow humans over a meal.
My house isn’t dirty or cluttered. It’s lived in.
It doesn’t look like it came from a magazine and not everything matches or is trendy and that’s ok. True friends - the people we want to invest our time into- don’t care.
And candidly if the house really is a mess or the meal is gross, these are the people who would love me enough to simply say that.
How refreshing.
…last night I invited a few of my neighbors and a new guy over for dinner, and got them all together for a meal; it filled me with so much joy. True joy. True connection. True laughter. True community. It was wonderful.
It ended up being a very jalepeno- forward meal… along with jalepeno flavored chips, I made one of my fave dishes- a vegan curry using butternut squash (including jalepenos because I love to add them to this recipe), served over rice and then I also made veggie fajitas (including jalapeños) (with optional ground beef) as well as homemade salsa.
With you guessed it- jalepeno in it. Recipes below.
My neighbor Nancy made the gorgeous raspberry pie. Erica prepared the pretty appetizer tray.
…we had fun. We laughed. We learned about each other. It was fantastic.
Ages ranged from 4-70s or so.
How beautiful is that ?!
