Dinner Diary: 29/52

Week 29 of Having People Over, and this week we finally made good on a dinner invite that has been floating for the better part of two years.

Our guest was our dear friend Julie, who has been an important part of the Recipe Club team for a couple of years now, and someone whose family we have heard about but somehow never managed to actually meet. Her husband, her kids, the stories — we’ve heard it all from Julie over the years. We just needed to finally make it happen. This is, of course, one of the exact problems this resolution was designed to solve, so we finally picked a date and made it happen on Sunday.

In the spirit of embracing summer, Robby had the idea to do surf and turf kebabs on the grill: steak and shrimp with a simple herb marinade of olive oil, onion, garlic, lemon juice and parsley. This was not something I’ve done for hosting before, but I was up for it and it turned out beautifully. I’d also been craving sweet corn on the cob, but is there any food more socially inconvenient than corn on the cob!? Trying to carry on a conversation while neighbors watch you chow down on a corn cob (laugh emoji). So I opted to take the corn OFF the cob and pull together my Summer Corn Salad, tossed with cherry tomatoes, fresh basil, red onion and a splash of vinegar. Corn on the cob is delicious. Corn OFF the cob is the superior way to serve corn at a dinner party.

The peach burrata salad with basil vinaigrette is usually a hit but was the one miss of the night. The peaches weren’t ripe. At all. Hard and totally flavorless, which is the great gamble of cooking with stone fruit before peak season hits. Fortunately, the heirloom tomatoes and burrata are good enough on their own that the salad still mostly worked, but I knew. Impatience got the best of me as I was craving summer peaches!

Rounding things out was a loaf of no knead bread, a lemon basil orzotto with peas that was warm and comforting in the best summer evening kind of way, and berries with a lemon loaf cake for dessert.

Julie and her husband have five kids, with only their youngest still at home. We were lucky to host them and three of their five! Their oldest lives on her own and is working nearby. Their next two daughters are away at college, and both are engaged and deep in wedding planning (that conversation alone could have taken the whole evening!) But the person I was perhaps most excited to meet was their nineteen-year-old son, who is currently enrolled at the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia; one of the oldest and most prestigious ballet institutions in the world. He’s home for the summer before his third and final year there, and I had approximately one thousand questions.

The conversation lived up to every expectation. Hearing his perspective on that world, the discipline, the rigor, the culture of training at that level, was fascinating in a way that’s hard to put into words. I loved ballet growing up and never had the ability (or the height!) to pursue it seriously, so sitting across from someone who is doing it at the highest level, at nineteen, felt like a real gift.

Their youngest daughter, a junior in high school, is darling and took it upon herself to give Ollie, our incoming freshman, a tutorial on surviving high school. She told him she’d be his BFF and that all her friends would look out for him. He was slightly embarrassed but he’ll absolutely be grateful in about a month when school starts!

Since all of Julie’s kids are older, for the first time in a while there was no separate kid table; no one running upstairs to play Barbies, and slightly less chaos (our kids still managed to bicker and cause a ruckus). For the most part, we all just sat together outside and talked, which was a different and lovely energy (with the occasional comic relief from Penny). Peak summer!

Nora surveyed the dinner spread, bypassed all of it except for the mixed berries, and then made herself a hot dog. I promise I’m trying! Meanwhile Penny came downstairs after the guests arrived in a full face of makeup: mascara, blush, and a bright red lip. Completely unsanctioned. She then proceeded to enthusiastically eat the shrimp and declare it delicious. They really do come how they come.

Still always happy we hosted.

See you next Sunday at 5.