A grand success

Last night's party was a grand affair! It is always so wonderful to have your favorite friends and family together, surrounded by a pervasive aura of love and happiness, music, great food and drink, uproarious laughter and endless talk which refuse to let silence enter. El and her wonderful husband created a fantastic slideshow of photographs of Mom and Dad from the past 40+ years as well as a number of loving notes fam and friends had sent in. In an old moving box I recently managed to unpack, I found three dinner plates from the china Mom and Dad received as wedding gifts. Last night, they ate from those. I'd had a local florist recreate a less-detailed version of Mom's wedding bouquet which she carried around sportingly for a while. Dad wore a boutonniere, champagne and wine flowed, and never before have I seen such a spread of food be decimated so quickly. Hear, hear!! Leftovers of any degree there were not.

We plowed through seven pounds of beef tenderloin, a vat of mint-pistachio pesto, two dozen rolls, the beet-horseradish salad, an asparagus-mint salad, a strawberry cheesecake, a lemon meringue pie and a chocolate-almond cake. Not a crumb remained. Easiest clean-up ever!