Sometimes life in the kitchen can mirror the lamest sitcoms. The burned roast at a dinner party, the dropped cake, or the added salt.
Added salt? You must not be a fan of The Andy Griffith Show. Really, neither am I, but any time I do happen to catch a snippet, it's
always the episode about Aunt Bee entering her pickles in the county fair contest. Andy thinks they need a little salt. So does Barney.
And Opie, and … You get the idea. Needless to say, the pickles win no prizes.
Real life could never follow such lame story lines. Or could it?
The first time you're invited to someone's home for dinner is a bunch of question marks. What do I bring? What do I wear? Will it
be formal or will the TV be on? What will they cook or will they just order in?
Recently, I went to a small dinner party, in a home to which I'd only been once or twice before for a few minutes. This time, I came
armed with a bottle of wine, wore casual-nice, and found the atmosphere a little stiff as the mismatched guests tried their best to feign
interest in each others' anecdotes. No music played, no TV played, and the hosts busied themselves in the kitchen.
Periodically, one or the other of the couple would come out for a quick chat, or to refill wine, and would update us on the
preparations for our meal. All of us enthusiastically oohed and aahed over the smells wafting in, and were more than ready when we
ushered into the dining room.
The meal was surprisingly simple. The two men had roasted several chickens with chunks of white potato. Everything was nicely
browned, and several of us remarked that there seemed to be a spice we just couldn't place.
Acting a little too cute and coy, the hosts said they couldn't reveal their secret recipe, but urged us all to try their special green sauce,
which was served with a spoon out of a small gravy bowl.
It wasn't until I was spooning it on my chicken that it hit me. This special green sauce was special, because a chef from Colombia
had made it. He made it in his obscure, small storefront restaurant that we had just recently dined in, where chicken and potatoes is
just about all that is served—served with green sauce.
Apparently, it was also served in this house. I asked what was in the sauce, or at least what made it so vibrantly green, and was
again put off by the 'can't reveal the secret' excuse, and felt like a refuge from a lost episode of Who's the Boss?
We all cleaned our plates, and everyone expressed just how much they enjoyed the meal and how much they appreciated all the
efforts of the hosts to make us all such a delicious dinner in their home. Settling in for dessert, we were again presented the offerings
as if this were the unveiling of a long-lost treasure. In this case, the treasure was two tarts, supposedly baked in that very kitchen, but I
had my doubts.
Roberta had a similar dessert experience. 'A girl I used to work with made a pie for some party, and the tin at the bottom was from
Baker's Square.' Oops. The woman had gone on and on about her pie all day at work, so looked especially embarrassed. 'She said
that she used an old tin she had from before,' says Roberta, 'but no one believed her.' Why would they? This was the same woman
who had talked up her hand-sewn Christmas party dress for weeks. When she brought it in to show off to her co-workers, they were
surprised to discover a label inside from Casual Corner. She claimed to sew labels in all her dresses as a little joke to herself.
Not everyone is so devious. Deb is a young professional who spends a lot of time at the office. She likes entertaining in her
comfortable loft space, but, even with such limited time, the closest she's ever come to passing off other food as her own is when she
added a chocolate sauce grid pattern across the top of a store-bought ice cream cake. 'I admitted upfront that I had bought the cake,'
she explains, 'but I made a really big deal about my decorating wizardry.'
Everything was also upfront when Coco was invited to dinner at the apartment of an acquaintance—or so it seemed. The
invitation was the kind of sign that maybe the friendship would become more genuine, rather than simply a surface-level dinner out
with a big group a few times per year kind of thing.
It turned out that the host had other intentions. 'She wanted to test several recipes in preparation for a 'real' dinner party,' explains
Coco. 'And several times she mentioned that she was appreciative that we were there to test the stuff, as if it was nothing but a
compliment.' Needless to say, the friendship never quite made it to the next level.
Even Aunt Bee would never be so thoughtless.
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