Let the Games Begin!

Well, I guess it's too late to back out now. The response from the folks I've informed about the project so far has been nothing less than ebullient. At this point still having a hard time discerning exactly who is excited about the actual project and who is just psyched about the prospect of home cooked free food, but I digress. :)

Have gotten into high gear and done a lot of brainstorming about different dinners and topics, themes, holidays, etc. I won't give away too much as I would prefer this to be a slowly unfolding flower if you'll excuse the saccharine metaphor. I can already tell that this is going to be an extreme amount of fun, at least for me. The countdown has begun in earnest for a week and a half already and I have yet a single dinner to show for it, so I thought I'd better get on the ball as my dear grandmother would say.

As mentioned, I've had to order the cookbook that the project is based upon from the good folks at Amazon who incidentally have taken my cash but failed to get the thing in a box much less in the mail to me yet. They claim it should be departing "any day now". The good news is a lot of the other items I ordered together with it are already on the way and most likely gonna be starting to arrive next week. So I'll have new toys to play with. Yeah for that.

Tomorrow evening shall be the opening event: a very intimate and small gathering of two close friends who I trust to go easy on me as I do my first test run on them. I was lucky enough to find a scanned digital copy of the entire cookbook on the interweb and this has allowed me to start in advance of me holding the real deal in my hands. Don't tell the folks at the NYT or I'm sure they'll sick their lawyers on me.

A sneak preview of tomorrow's menu:

Spicy Tomato Salad Moroccan-style
Cold Zucchini Soup
Haricots Verts a la Paysanne Landaise
Sauteed Mushrooms
My Mother's Chicken Spaghetti*
Sour Cream Lime Pie
Fresh baked boule (my own, not from the NYT Cookbook)

*note this is the exact name of the recipe, so this refers to Craig Claiborne's mom, not my own. It's interesting to note that I chose this because my very own mother is rather famous for her chicken spaghetti, so there's some connection here, but just wanted to clarify for the record.

Trying to get the pie together tonight and although bought everything I needed for the dinner (and more!) at the grocery this afternoon, they failed to have ready made pie crust. I was trying to cut corners and the universe obviously wanted to voice it's displeasure. Not a problem to make by scratch until I realized I had no shortening. So I did what Julia Child's would do: I used butter. Sure it can't hurt, right?

Pictures and other observations on the launch event shall follow tomorrow I'm sure, so stay tuned......and wish me luck!