The aftermath of a good party

Now, don't get me wrong. Last night was superb, and in going to bed just before 1:00am, I called it a day (a morning?) hours before Elia and Mom. But I am really.so.seriously. tired today. Wow. It was with enormous gratitude that I brought the boys to school for a "long" day (those on which Ol stays until 2:15), and other than lunch out, us adults spent much of that time draped Dali-like over various couches and beds throughout the house.

Even the pets seemed soggy. And that's something.

I did spy these little tomatoes and am thrilling with visions of sweet summer tomatoes, plucked and enjoyed before the sun's warmth fades from their skins. It's coming...

If I want a rhubarb pie badly enough, will it appear?

A grand success

Last night's party was a grand affair! It is always so wonderful to have your favorite friends and family together, surrounded by a pervasive aura of love and happiness, music, great food and drink, uproarious laughter and endless talk which refuse to let silence enter. El and her wonderful husband created a fantastic slideshow of photographs of Mom and Dad from the past 40+ years as well as a number of loving notes fam and friends had sent in. In an old moving box I recently managed to unpack, I found three dinner plates from the china Mom and Dad received as wedding gifts. Last night, they ate from those. I'd had a local florist recreate a less-detailed version of Mom's wedding bouquet which she carried around sportingly for a while. Dad wore a boutonniere, champagne and wine flowed, and never before have I seen such a spread of food be decimated so quickly. Hear, hear!! Leftovers of any degree there were not.

We plowed through seven pounds of beef tenderloin, a vat of mint-pistachio pesto, two dozen rolls, the beet-horseradish salad, an asparagus-mint salad, a strawberry cheesecake, a lemon meringue pie and a chocolate-almond cake. Not a crumb remained. Easiest clean-up ever!

My first miss

I missed my first day of Em-i-lis yesterday, not bad for having written at least once per day for the past 2+ years. Nonetheless, I missed it. Just too busy and something had to go. Farmers market, big family breakfast during which there was some hilariousness of the idea of milking a cat (I can't really explain, but we were all about to fall off our chairs), Jack's final baseball game (another enormous family affair which was fun but again, his sweet team lost; it was their best game ever though so go 1st grade baseball), racing home for six people to shower and get pretty, a 45-minute drive to the wedding, tons of fun at the wedding and reception, the drive home, et voila. It's Monday morning, and I have a huge amount to do in anticipation of the 40th anniversary party tonight. Off to roast 5 pounds of beets, pick up the 7 pound tenderloin, deal with that, prepare some horseradish (you should see the size of the root), make some mint-pistachio pesto and some horseradish sauce, pick up the rolls, pick up the  bouquet (I took a wedding-day pic of my parents to a great local florist, yay York Flowers, and they are recreating Mom's bouquet; isn't that marvelous??!!), get dressed, pop some corks, and off we go.

Tomorrow is my Sabbath.