I had been thinking of inviting a few of my friends for a while for dinner before summer ends. Moving to a new place and accepting a new role made me procrastinate on my plan. Finally, after considering the guests' availability, the day got fixed, sent an invite to 5 families, 20 members, and one less thing lifted off my brain. I continued leading my day-to-day routine in both personal and professional.
Finally, the planned Friday has come and sent the new address to all my old friends and advised them to carpool as we have a parking challenge here in this new place. I enjoyed eating the toast and coffee made by my lovely hubby before I start preparing both veg and non-veg food by following mom's rule to give equal priority to both even though only one person is a vegetarian in the invite list.
As this was an informal event, though I prefer to follow the theme and pattern, the amount of food and the number of varieties I cooked prevented me serve them in a dinner set.
Slowly friends started coming and started enjoying the starters 'Spicy Shrimp', 'Sweet & Saur Eggplant' with hot and cold beverages in the backyard, and kids are all over the place eating and playing with cuteness overloaded puppy, 'Theo' new addition to our friend's family.
After a good amount of chatting, we started serving the main course Indian flatbread 'Nan' with 'Butter chicken' & 'Butter Tofu', the rice item 'Mushroom Biryani' with 'Rita' and 'Chicken Biryani' with 'Chicken Kurma', 'White Rice' with lentil soup 'Sambar' and 'Potato Fry' and ended with eating a dessert, an authentic South Indian sweet 'Chalimide' sent by my mom.
We all went into a food coma and slowed down a bit until we rejuvenated ourselves by drinking an 'Indian Chai Tea'. When the guys were deep in discussion on stocks and politics, we/ women had our own parallel conversation about dresses and jewelry that really excited us.
Slowly, guests started departing and praised me in all areas like how the food tasted, the number of varieties I home-cooked, and managed it flawlessly. Everyone said and thought I put tremendous effort into making all these dishes and keeping the house clean on a working day.
Did I put a whole lot of effort into making food? To answer that, 'Yes and No'. Here is the justification why I gave both answers -
No, I did not put much effort in one day - Because I came up with a mental roadmap a week ahead on what menu items to serve and required ingredients. What prep work I can do so that I can make the food easily by assembling them on the day of the event. It took away 50% off of the work off of my shoulder. Hubby and the younger one took care of cleaning the dishes when the older one was busy playing games with his friends online after cleaning his messy room.
Yes, I put effort - Because you need to balance your professional and personal life. As it is a workday Friday, fortunately, my work starts early in the morning due to geographic regions. So, I started cooking from noon by utilizing the prep work that I have already done ahead of time. When it comes to the house, though it is in a clean state as we are living in this place every day, we need to keep it extra presentable to impress the guests :)
So, what I feel and would like to share is, having a mental roadmap on anything and everything ahead of time and executing them one step at a time reduces your stress and efforts. It will take you to the end goal.
Pic: Now and then. I wish my now teen boys will allows us to take picture as we used to take picture when they were young :)
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