Friday Festivity for Friends

I love to get together with friends on Fridays but everyone is usually pretty run down after a long week, including me. I tend to drive a long distance on Fridays to get home and with weather or traffic in general I end up getting home much later than expected.  Take out to the rescue.  But take out from better grocery counters prepared areas is really a godsend that doesn’t mean you have to have to take the take out look and sacrifice style, no way.

So I pulled in with an overloaded car to my grocery and pulled together a menu from their selections:

Grilled salmon, Pesto fettuccini, marinated asparagus tips, sautéed broccoli rabe with garlic, beet salad with a citrus dressing of finely sliced onion and mandarin oranges. (OK, a bit much, but my heritage DNA is wired to stuff people with abundance).   To save time, instead of a salad, I thought I’d start with a cream of mushroom soup to which I added lobster meat to and rather than the serving needs of a cake or pie, I choose the frivolity of “flying saucers”, ice cream sandwiches but made with a lower fat (thank God) yogurt.

Now that I saved all this time with the food, I thought I’d dress it up a bit.  Actually I thought I’d dress it up a whole lot to counteract the amount of plastic containers I’d be opening in front of these guests. So out of the cabinets came the china and crystal and sterling.  The cream soup cups with the gold embellished double handles are some of my favorites. They will dress up any setting and make a great presentation to start a meal.

Layering the dinnerware is also a nice touch because it repeats the pattern as well as layers the courses.  I doubled the dinner plates so I could set these up ahead of time and “plate” the food which makes a much nicer presentation.  Let me talk more about this in the next installment.   I also want to mention the Concord, MA show house I did last weekend next as well.

In the end it was a wonderful, fireplace going, candle lit celebration that kicked off my fall entertaining calendar in a great way. I also have guests that have terrific tastes in great wines and are generous enough to share. So the evening was complete and wonderful, thanks to good friends, good food and a beautiful table that added a luxurious comfort to a well deserved Friday get together.