I don't like dinner parties. Oh, you don't either? You don't like all that fussing and the stressed host and the awkward conversations and the lights on too bright in the living room and all the silly courses that really only make sense if you have a manservant and who has a manservant these days, anyway? I totally hear you.
Can I tell you what I do like, in fact, really, really love? I love having people over for supper. A difference in semantics, yes, but also a totally different attitude.
Having people over for supper means someone sitting on the floor while we're snacking on olives. It means crowding around a table of mismatched chairs and unmatched napkins. It means listening to Otis Redding, talking about real stuff, and if I am extraordinarily lucky, someone other than me suggesting an impromptu dance party or game of charades.
This is food at its best. For me, the greatest pleasure of cooking is getting to provide and share. When it's just me, hacking at an onion is as relaxing as 90 minutes of yoga. But when there are others who will be sitting around a table with me, filling the living room with their stories and the sort of grand, creative ideas that can only be hatched in this very environment, putting dinner together is beyond the beyond. I live for that. It's not a performance of any kind, hostessing or culinary. It's just sharing in the most basic human need -- hey, are you hungry? -- and marking the occasion as more than just a base human requirement. In fact, it's like magic.
I put together these individual flower arrangements in juice glasses and jam jars. Then I snapped some leftover summer kabob sticks in half, cut strips from a brown paper bag, and made little flags for each person, stamping their names out. The imperfect charm of rubber stamps just never gets old for me.
