Thursday, April 5, 2012

Hat Island Series V: Saturday Night

You might think because we were alone on an island that we would stay in our PJ's and eat hamburgers and hot dogs all weekend long. Not a chance! It's a special occasion and we would never miss a chance to dress up and sit around a grand dinning room table with friends. This is what Saturday night was based around, a 3 course dinner in our finest threads. 


Hor d'oeuvres: Foie Gras and a caramel apple jelly served with a warm baguette. I brought back both these items last spring from France, waiting to use them for this very event. It was definitely worth the wait.


First Course: A magical potato and cheddar soup, made from scratch, served in individual pots.


Second Couse: Jamie Oliver's "Super Sexy" salad. This included figs, prosciutto, buffalo mozzarella, fresh basil and a super sexy dressing.


Main Course: Filet mignon served with a crème fraîche morel sauce, mini yorkshires and mashed carrots.


Dessert: Ginger molasses moustache shaped cookies and red velvet cupcakes.


One of our challenges was the table decor. It's hard to envision a table setup before you get there. Especially when you don't know what plates, cutlery and glassware you will be delt. When we got there, I saw that it would not be an issue in the least.  The items that we did bring were light weight and easy to transport, these included: tortoise cutlery, table runner (burlap from Home Depot), birch candles, corks (which we used for the place setting name cards) and white cotton napkins. The idea of using driftwood from the beach was really our only option for a centrepiece. We washed shells from off the beach for each plate and wrapped each one like a present using twine (pictured below).


One thing that really added to this night were the question cards that we made. I created 10 blank cards for each person. Everyone wrote 5 personal questions and 5 generic Trivial Pursuit-like questions. We had everything from "what was my nickname in high-school?" to "where did the pea-coat originate?". We learned a lot about each other and everything else.


As usual we danced between courses and before we knew it the night came to a close. It was perfect. My friend said she felt like a camera crew should have been following us that night, and she's right...it did have a Nancy Meyers vibe to it. 
Cheers,
Charysse

No comments:

Post a Comment