Practicing Domesticity: Una Cena Italiana

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Una Cena Italiana

or How to Host the Perfect Dinner Party in 13 easy steps (pictures included)

1. Find a super cute place to host your event.

2. Shopping time! Head to your nearest Trader Joes / Farmers' Market / Vons / food distribution center of your choice and stock up on pasta, sauce, and vegetables.

3. The night before your dinner make your tiramisu and place it in the fridge to ensure optimal firmness of the cheese. Note: if using a recipe from an Italian native know that they might assume you know what you're doing, so when they say ten eggs, they don't mean ten whole eggs, they really mean ten egg yolks and like two egg whites, or the cheese becomes too watery and the ladyfingers might float, bad news - trust me.

Yes, ours did look this good. No, we did not take a picture. Sad.

4. Ensure that you have enough room in the kitchen to cook; i.e., don't let everyone help at the same time.

5. As important as it is that the food is good - and trust me, it's quite crucial - presentation is also essential, therefore, find room arrangements and table settings that will help set the mood (this means, the plastic tablecloth you use everyday won't cut it).

6. Create fleur de lis in wine glasses. Note: only perform this step if you're feeling truly sophisticated.

7. Flowers are always a must.

8. Back to the food - bruschetta is the perfect appetizer for any Italian meal. If you're preparing this for college-age / early 20s / people who run on Italian time, do not start cutting the tomatoes until the time they're supposed to arrive that way they won't be soggy when they actually arrive 15 minutes later.

9. Bake your own foccaccia. Note: again, only perform this step if you're feeling truly legit.

10. Take the dog outside for a pre-party visit with nature.

11. Greet your party with smiling faces - and a super-active dog, if possible (note: however, it may be wisest to put the dog away - say in her crate - after this point in order to ensure that she doesn't eat something she's not supposed to and make you sit outside in the cold with her for twenty minutes).

12. When your party arrives, throw your pasta in boiling water to ensure that the noodles turn out al dente - again, necessary if you want to be truly Italian.

13. Sit down and enjoy a delightful meal with friends - Buon appetito! - and then begin the clean-up right away, or you won't want to do it.

Dishes - appropriate

Fun German cleaner

Living room back? Check.

Dining room/kitchen back? Check.

Relax :)

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What I Learned From My Mother

by Julia Kasdorf

I learned from my mother how to love

the living, to have plenty of vases on hand

in case you have to rush to the hospital

with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants

still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars

large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole

grieving household, to cube home-canned pears

and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins

and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.

I learned to attend viewing even if I didn’t know

the deceased, to press the moist hands

of the living, to look in their eyes and offer

sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.

I learned that whatever we say means nothing,

what anyone will remember is that we came.

I learned to believe I had the power to ease

awful pains materially like an angel.

Like a doctor, I learned to create

from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once

you know how to do this, you can never refuse.

To every house you enter, you must offer

healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,

the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.

Source: Sleeping Preacher (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992)

Alone

by Maya Angelou

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

The Silence

by Wendell Berry

Though the air is full of singing
my head is loud
with the labor of words.

Though the season is rich
with fruit, my tongue
hungers for the sweet of speech.

Though the beech is golden
I cannot stand beside it
mute, but must say

"It is golden," while the leaves
stir and fall with a sound
that is not a name.

It is in the silence
that my hope is, and my aim.
A song whose lines

I cannot make or sing
sounds men's silence
like a root. Let me say

and not mourn: the world
lives in the death of speech
and sings there.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Una Cena Italiana

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