A Tale of Two Dinners: The Worst of Times

On Saturday night, Peter and I hosted a couple friends at our house for dinner. Between me and one of our guests, I worked around allergies to beef, cheese, eggs, gluten, tomatoes, sage and soy. Ha!

I carefully planned my menu: Dorie Greenspan's chard-stuffed pork, roasted domino potatoes and green beans with toasted hazelnuts. Sounds pretty good, right?

Well, it was no where near our best work. The meat thermometer wasn't reading right, and we kept checking (and cooking!) the pork longer than it needed. The domino potatoes turned into charred potato chip-like things around the edges, and dry potato disks in the middle. And the green beans? I overcooked them until they became a grey-green pile of ick.


I tried to follow Julia Child's golden rule of entertaining - “You should never apologize at the table. People will think, ‘Yes, it’s really not so good.'" But I couldn't stop myself! We all knew it was really not so good. I didn't follow my own golden rules, either: never cook something new (domino potatoes) and always have one thing completely ready ahead of time (i.e., kale salad instead of green beans). 


I know these things happen to the best of us, but it's still annoying, yes? I need to be better at letting these (very tiny in the grand scheme of things!) disappointments go. 


Anyways, tomorrow I'll give you a peak at a Best of Times dinner we made for family just one night later! Proof that the best remedy to culinary let-down is to brush yourself off and get back in the kitchen.