The Dinner Party

GC’s Passover dinner party plan was to make a main meat dish of beef brisket, a main meatless dish of something else, and a bunch of complimentary side dishes. However, the entire city of Ottawa ran out of beef brisket in the days leading up to Passover. I heard there were lineups, lost pre-orders, sold-out signs, and angry Jews. Some people ended up driving to Montreal to get their brisket.

But not GC. He didn’t get angry and he didn’t drive to Montreal. He just got paralyzed with indecision. Every day he woke up declaring “Today I’m going to figure out the menu.” And every night he fell asleep mumbling, “First thing tomorrow, I’m going to figure out the menu.”

Finally, on Thursday, the day of the big event, he sprang into action. He spent the morning immersed in cookbooks.

I arrived at his place in the afternoon to find the house smelling delicious, the dog’s tail wagging, and GC up to his elbows in ingredients. He had several dishes finished, others underway, and still others waiting in the wings.

I rolled up my sleeves and got to work peeling, measuring, chopping, simmering and drinking wine. We made about 10 dishes and drank a whole bottle of wine before the guests arrived.

Before the meal was served there were some traditions to be upheld, including some Hebrew readings, singing, question-asking and wine-drinking.

This was my first Passover, and I was pleased to discover that it’s a tradition for each person do drink four glasses of wine at Passover dinner. A couple of people reminisced about their first time getting drunk as seven-year-olds at Passover. (I was brought up agnostic, and I think agnostics need more traditions – some special days and food and celebratory wine!)

After the ceremonies, GC served dinner. Most of the food didn’t turn out as well as we had hoped, but after all that wine I don’t think we cared too much. There were a few dishes that had GC and me looking at each other quizzically across the table, telepathically communicating “Do you think it’s supposed to taste like this?”

One of the odder dishes was the strawberry mousse dessert. Maybe if we hadn’t been making so many recipes, we might have questioned the logic of a recipe that told us to freeze the mousse. I mean, when have you ever had mousse served frozen? But we didn’t question it, we just made room in the freezer, popped it in, and moved on to the next recipe. And several hours later we were unpleasantly surprised to discover it was frozen. Duh.

There were also a bunch of traditional Jewish dishes, like kuegel (I think I’m spelling it wrong, but it was sweet) and fish, and simmis (another sweet, misspelled dish). And there were salads. And chicken. And meatballs. And hummus. And green beans. And ratatouille. And soup. And wine.

My favourite dish of the evening was the curried spinach-lentil salad. Yum.

The guests – which included three Jewish college boys, two Jewish dogs, and the Quasi-Jewish Potty-Mouthed Songwriter and her BH – were charming and funny and never once raised their telepathic eyebrows at one another as if to say “Hmm, interesting, do you think it’s supposed to taste like this?” They just kept eating and drinking and cracking jokes that had nothing at all to do with the food.

GC and I were rightfully impressed with ourselves for actually managing to prepare ten dishes all at once. We don’t usually go for quantity over quality, but it’s good to know we’re capable of it.

The dogs spent the whole night chewing on each others faces. They almost overturned the table just as the meal was beginning, by wrestling and chewing faces under the table. The table lurched, wine glasses wobbled, people shrieked. It was very exciting. (Wrestling and face-chewing was permitted to resume after dinner, and both dogs were exhausted and coated with slobber by the end of the evening.)

I slept like a log and woke up with a hangover. It was worth it.