Dinner Party

One of the glorious things about catering is having leftover food, remaking it into a completely different meal and inviting friends over to enjoy it with-- basically for free! After the catering last weekend I had an (honestly) quite absurd amount of grapes left over. What to do with pounds and pounds of extra grapes? Juice them, of course. So I invited a bunch of friends over for dinner and a drink-making competition. Whoever could make the best grape juice mixed drink won a mystery prize.

The meal itself was salmon pasta (the salmon rillette re-made), roasted shallots and butternut squash with parsley and an arugula salad with chopped persimmon and toasted pine nuts. For dessert we had fresh vanilla ice cream with strawberries.

The drink-off got really competitive. We had four teams. There were no rules; just to make a drink that was mostly grape juice and then anything else you could find in my kitchen or backyard. People made speeches and there may have been some fowl play. In the end Will won the mystery prize with his grape juice, gin, seltzer water, meyer lemon, fresh mint and ice concoction. We're going to make this a seasonal event. I am open to suggestions for next quarter's fruit (blood orange, grapefruit?).

PS How great does this compost look? Grape pulp + persimmon slices. Compost really IS beautiful.