all the parties
2. Okra
3. Eggplant
4. Shahi Paneer
5. Garbanzo Beans with these added sides or condiments: 6. bhaturas
7. Grated daikon
8. Peppered chopped cucumber
9. Yogurt sauce (I think this might be called raita)
10. Rice with peas and cucumber flakes As you can see: it was a lot. Shobhit and I took advantage of our latest "$20 off $40" coupon to get most of the vegetables we needed from the Amazon Fresh store down on 23rd & Jackson on Sunday, then we did a minor supplemental shop at Hau Hau Market in the International District on Tuesday evening. I took myself to see a movie Monday night, but I deliberately made myself available for whatever help Shobhit needed Tuesday through Friday—it was the least I could do, as scheduling this dinner with four guests was all my doing. Shobhit was happy to do it, as he loves cooking, and it was the first time we managed to host a dinner with guests since 2018. But it's a very involved, multi-day process and I knew he could use the help. On Tuesday and Wednesday in particular, I did a lot of vegetable chopping. Also: when I ranked the main dishes "in order of popularity," that was based on my impression of the guests. Lynne, it turns out, loves okra; I can't stand it and never eat it. And once Lynne finally saw my email urging them to bring containers for leftovers, she told me later she found it to be an excellent idea when I suggested bringing a cooler, knowing that they both had a long way to get back home (Lynne to Maple Valley and Cathryn to Bainbridge Island). Lynne brought her best friend Darcie, who came from her home in Bellingham, so they made a night of it and got a hotel downtown. They just kept a cooler in their hotel room, apparently. Cathryn did not bring any containers, and declined our offer to just give her some. She spends a good amount of time looking after her mother, and she said her mom would not want any of it. It sounded like she would be very soon afterward be going there, and thus perhaps would not have time to eat any leftovers any time soon, so she didn't bother with leftovers. And, in spite of us saying they really did not need to bring anything, they all brought us wine. Even though Shobhit works at Total Wine and we already have a ton. On the upside, Cathryn and Christian brought us a bag of two wine bottles, and I think Lynne and Darcie brought us one; all three of them were consumed by the end of the evening. There was not one person at this dinner who had any problem partaking in the wine. In fact, they all took Ubers to our place: Lynne and Darcie from their downtown hotel; Cathryn and Christian from the ferry terminal on the waterfront, having parked their car on the Bainbridge Island side. Shobhit and I would never think to do this, because to us it's an unnecessary expense, but for people unconcerned with the expense, it's a smart approach: they can drink without worrying about it. Amazingly, even though they all Ubered to our place with no coordination with each other, they all arrived at the front door of our building at the same time. They had buzzed my phone using the intercom, but I didn't answer my phone fast enough which took it to voice mail, so I rushed downstairs to let them in, and was surprised to find all four of them there. I'm kicking myself now that I never took a photo of Shobhit's beautiful spread of samosas, which he arranged on a ceramic plate with a stencil of the Taj Mahal on it, leaving it on the coffee table. You can actually see the samosas to the left and in the background of the full size of the photo of everyone (except me, taking the photo) seen at the top of this post. Actually you can see them just in the size of the image embedded in this post, although the full size makes it easier to tell that, when I took the photo, there were 11 of the samosas left, and I believe each of us had eaten at least one by then—and Cathryn, clearly very impressed, had already had two. That indicates Shobhit made 18 for the evening; there were six left after everyone went home, and I packed those up to take with me to Claudia's house in Port Orchard on Saturday. I almost warned everyone to be careful not to eat too many of the samosas, as it would be very tempting to do so, but there was a ton of food yet to come. As you saw from the list of dishes above, there were another four main dishes besides the samosas, yet to be consumed at the table, which barely fit everything we put on it. I did not feel this was necessary, but Shobhit insisted on both a bowl (for the soupier dishes) and a small plate (for the bhaturas) in addition to the regular sized plate at each setting. Between that, the napkins with silverware, a water glass for everyone and a wine glass for everyone, and all the dishes and sides barely fit in what limited space was left in the center of the table, truly nothing else could have fit on that table, which was barely large enough for the six of us to sit around. In fact, we only have four chairs as part of that table-and-chairs set; the other two chairs came from the two desks in the bedroom, including the white, swivel chair that I use at my desk every day. They were very much mismatched and likely far more mismatched a setup than either Lynne or Cathryn would have at their homes, which if I was any more insecure I would be embarrassed by. I wasn't, though, because the food was excellent and all the guest cared about was both the food and the company. These are great people who don't judge anyone living on a budget, which I honestly think none of them even really thought about. In fact, when Shobhit gave a tour of the condo, there were comments about how much space there was in what otherwise appeared at first glance to be a small unit. I very much enjoyed the entire evening, and everyone else seemed to as well. Shobhit seems to have it in his head that giving a tour of the entire condo complex is just what we do with all dinner guests; we've lived there fourteen and a half years so it is rarely top of mind for me anymore. But, they were all very interested in a tour, so I did the standard route: heading over to the highest of several rooftop decks on the west building, working our way down to the ground floor over there, then back to our building and working our way back up, to what I feel are the best decks in the complex. In fact, although there are good views from the 5th-floor deck on the west building (which is only five stories), there is a ground breaking already underway for another residential complex directly across the street from there on 14th Avenue, and we realized that once that building is finished, the view of the skyline from that vantage point, at least its northern end (this shot, taken from that deck during the tour we gave Uncle David and Mary Ann in 2018, shows the skyline to the south, a view that will remain unspoiled; it's the view if you turn to the right from that spot, which it appears I have never taken a photo of—perhaps now I really should, before it disappears—which will soon be blocked). The west building has kind of a ridiculous number of decks, including one that I did not take everyone to which is about the size of one of the elevators. But once we saw the 5th-floor deck, we went down one floor to the one that's on the 4th floor, then made our way to yet another on the 3rd floor, which surrounds a skylight that is directly above the lobby staircase of that building that runs between floors 1 and 2. From there we went to the pool table and work station area with free wifi on the second floor, along with the package room that used to be an art room (packages were moved there as a secure room after too many thefts from lobbies; in the past month thieves have gotten even into this room, with fobs taken from stolen realter lock boxes, all of which have now been deactivated). Then down the stairs to the east building lobby, showing them the yoga room that also opens to the lovely inner courtyard that building has. We couldn't show them the community kitchen or the theater because a huge party was happening in there at the time—by far the biggest I've seen since before the pandemic, actually. It was big enough that some of the attendees still had masks on, which was probably smart of them. It spilled out into the outside area behind a locked gate that has a pathway to the pea patch, which actually, I forgot to mention was the very first spot we took everyone, as Shobhit wanted to show off his garden plots. Anyway, done with the west building, we shifted back over to the east building, the one Shobhit and I live in, and we went up to the two rooftop decks over there, my favorites—and since our building is seven floors and higher up on the hill, not even the new building across the street on 14th is likely to obscure our skyline view from there. (We can no longer see the Space Needle from up there, but that's only because of the insane amount of high-rise residential towers now built along Denny Way. We could still see the Space Needle from there as recently as a year and a half ago.) Everyone was suitably impressed with the views from the top of our building; Lynn took photos from both the "Garden Deck" (if I am remembering its name correctly; I may have to edit this later) and the better of the two, the much larger "Sun Deck" at the southwest corner of the building. We hung out there for several minutes, and Lynne even sat quietly admiring the sunset beyond the city skyline for a little while, until I went over to sit next to her at the tall table and chairs she was sitting at. This whole tour too a good while, and we went back downstairs to eat the gulab jamun dessert Shobhit prepared. This was made from a mix packet—as had been the bhaturas, incidentally. Shobhit considered whether to do that for the bread or make parathas from scratch, which would have been much better but a lot more time-consuming. I voted for the bhaturas because it would be faster and it would use up the mix; I reassured his insecurity about not making the bhaturas from scratch by reminding him he had already made the samosas, a far more authentically delicious item, entirely from scratch, which would more than make up for it. And although Cathryn and Christian did not take any leftovers, Lynne and Darcie did, and they were not shy about it; Lynne took a good amount of the okra, in fact. They were well prepared with compostable to-go containers, and they took so much of the eggplant that Shobhit ate the last of it for dinner on Saturday. There's still plenty of the shahi paneer left, which is fine by me as that's my favorite. My dinner on Saturday was potato-based samosa filling with fried frozen parathas; and last night I ate one of the 15 samosas Shobhit made with the last of the filling that was left. Today the office is even more empty than usual because it's Monday, but hopefully Marie in IT will be here, as I was talking to her about this on Friday and I want to share one of the samosas with her; I brought four of them with me to work today. I took a photo of the wreath Lynne brought, made entirely from her own garden, just as everyone was leaving—I found a nail to hang it from on the living room wall near the table—and that was about a quarter after 10:00. So, the guests were there nearly four hours Friday night, which was a pretty perfect amount of time, for the company and the food we were eating. I had been talking to Lynne about having her over for dinner sometime since before the pandemic, and then I would bring it up semi-regularly even during the pandemic. She retired late last year, and I got some clarification on the timing of her departure and some info that basically shot down some of Scott's theories. Lynne was perfectly happy to retire, apparently, even though she did confirm she had already been told the program that housed her position was being eliminated. She'd been wanting to retire for a couple of years anyway, and left with no ill will. In fact, she said there had been two separate dates set for a sendoff of some kind, canceled the second time due to the Omicron covid wave over the holidays, and after that, she decided to bag a party all together and just move on. I totally understood that. Anyway, even after she retired last year, I told her I still planned to have her over for dinner sometime, and when I texted her July 10 to see if she'd be available August 12, she cracked me up when she replied with Yes, yes, yes!!! Choosing August 12 as the date actually had more to do with Cathryn, who was being invited largely because of when she nearly insisted on buying a delivered lunch for Shobhit and me the week we were home sick with covid in April. I was perfectly happy to accept this generosity, as I always am, but Shobhit characteristically resisted. He became more comfortable with it when I emailed Cathryn to say, "I'll make you a deal. We'll let you buy us lunch if you promise you'll come over to our place for dinner sometime." She agreed, and when it was decided she would come to work in the office so she could reliably run a monthly tasks that consistently gives her problems when working from home, that date would be August 12 so I suggested we do dinner that night since she'd already be in Seattle anyway. (Her husband, Christian, came on the ferry later; she met him there and then they Ubered to our place together.) This was, apparently, only the second time she came to work in the office since pandemic work-from-home started. So, it just made sense to combine Cathryn and Lynne for the dinner. I tried to get Tracy to join us too, but she was busy due to it being her birthday weekend; it's just as well because we could only fit six people at the table. (We could have accommodated seven, we just would have had to serve more buffet style.) In any case, it was a lovely and very successful evening and we all had a great time. I'll be happy to host a dinner with some other guests again, but hopefully not too soon. We'll be preparing one of the meals at the family vacation house in Leavenworth in September anyway.
