Last night was lovely, although today it is 2 pm and I'm still in my pajamas having accomplished nothing but half the dishes and Alex is still asleep. I think he's sick because he keeps coughing and moaning. Anyway, earlier in the week we invited two couples over for dinner on Friday night. Oleg and Nastya and Romashka and Yulia. I meant it to be a classy and wine-filled evening and not anything like the typical Ukrainian dinner party. I spent all week scouring food blogs and recipe sites for things I could make with ingredients I could find around here. I ended up choosing recipes that could be changed if I couldn't find something. Ie: Cream cheese or smittana. Sweet potatoes or potatoes. Friday morning we went shopping and I found most of what I needed which was pretty impressive. I started cooking at about four (they were supposed to arrive at 8) and at just about that time Romashka called to inform us that both couples were going to bring their kids. (Uh, what?) And they wanted to know what to bring. Alex tried to explain that this was an AMERICAN dinner party and it was not necessary to bring anything. The concept was clearly hard for them to get their heads around because Ukrainian dinner parties are very different from what I had planned. Fortunately Alex understood my intentions-- the fact that he's lived all over comes in handy quite a bit when I run into cultural barriers. So, I cooked and cooked and cooked for a really long time with only minor disaster (and now for 8 people, not 6). I made stuffed chicken breast with a lemon butter sauce, a light pesto over shells, herbed potato wedges and Viennese cucumber salad. Everyone arrived about 8:15 with bags of groceries: juice, beer, vodka... and Yula made pizza. I was a little annoyed but sort of expected this. Anyway, my food turned out to be a big hit post Oleg picking up a piece of chicken and asking, "What's IN this?" He's jewish so I said, "lots of pig."
The night, as I said before, turned out to be lovely. The kids were sweet and I am absolutely in love with Oleg and Nastya's little girl Angelina. Apparently she's always asking about me and kept saying "I love you best friend." in English. She's also delighted to use the word "cool".
At one point the little boy started crying and they went home around midnight. Nastya and Angelina stayed past one which was nice. Nastya is becoming a real friend and her English keeps getting better and better. I really need a friend here so this makes me uber-happy. She's all worried that I won't come back here for the summer but I totally will.
Okay, now to the rest of those dishes...
Dinner party = Success.
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