Post 295 Friends who come to dinner.

I was having 2 friends to dinner tonight. I have been to dinner at their place many times in the last couple of years. It was well and truly time to reciprocate.  The building work next door makes parking difficult most evenings. Weekends are not to bad.

I had invited them for chicken livers - a dish I have cooked for many years, but don't cook for myself alone. Mostly, when I have guests, I cook something in advance - like moussaka- but chicken livers have to be cooked at the last minute. And they need to be fresh. So I was at the Central Market this morning at ten past eight. Unfortunately I was so intent on my shopping list I forgot to take photos.

I was home by 9.00am and by having my breakfast by 9.30 when my dove friend with the black wing tips arrived to check out the seed situation. I distributed some from the container near the door without frightening Black Tips away. I enjoyed watching the shadows cast  and the play of light while I drank my coffee.I don't understand this strange sitting down behaviour. Is it about extracting warmth from the tiles or some form of nesting practice? I've seen it before, but not often.

My brother called me. NSW has a Covid hotspot on the Northern Beaches which may end up closing the NSW border with Queensland. It is currently being managed by restricting the movement of people from the local government area of the hotspot. My sister-in-law is booked to travel to one of the border towns tomorrow to visit her mother in a Queensland nursing home.  I hope she is able to make it. At the moment it looks OK. I listened to the various State Press Conferences for the rest of the afternoon while getting ready for dinner.

There was a lot of tidying up and putting away needed before my guests arrived, so I began with the remaining pile of bags. This time I sat at the dining table and ironed while sitting in a chair. These were the smaller bags, so I could do it without an ironing board. I didn't count the bags, but they filled another plastic container. This is a very good job jobbed, as my mother would have said.    

During the afternoon my friend Panayoula phoned and we had a good chat. She has recently retired and is spending lots of time with her grandchildren. She has promised to make Greek biscuits with them this week. It reminded me that I still have the recipe for these given to me when I was at university by the mother of a Greek-Australian friend. I asked her for the recipe and wrote it down as she told me. I used it several times but my biscuits were never successful I always suspected there was some secret part to it that she didn't tell me. Panayoula has sent me her recipe, which looks far more promising.

After that it was time to prepare for dinner. This involved putting away lots of embroidery bits and pieces - the remains of finished projects and a few unfinished ones, like the quilt and hexies that have been been on the floor for weeks., pinning Christmas cards to the curtains, filing a few papers and finding homes (or temporary accommodation) for quite a lot of books and magazines as well as finding glasses and crockery, and doing what food preparation I could. 

When my guests arrived we had some complications with the lift. When I buzz people in, the lift brings them automatically to my floor. Today I had a phone call to say they were in the lift with the door closed but going nowhere. It seems one of them (versions here vary) pressed numerous buttons in the lift, thereby overriding my activation of the lift from my apartment. I eventually called the lift from my floor and they arrived safely. 

We had a very pleasant evening catching up and putting the world to rights. The chicken livers (with bacon, mushrooms and a good dash of wine, worked well and the cherry and almond tart I had bought in the market was a hit.  When they left, getting close to 11 pm, I watched from the balcony to make sure they made it out of the lift without mishap.

,The balcony looked strangely domestic, even drab, under artificial light (now there's a strange phrase!) at night. I rarely put the balcony light on, nor do I often go out there at night.  I am very late with this blog, so am going to set the email delivery for an hour later. The dishwasher is on. It has been a busy but very satisfying day. It's lovely to have company, and fabulous to have friends who come to dinner.