On dinner parties. 19 March 2008 7:21 pm
Posted by Tracy in : cooking, friends, identity, politics, responsibility, school, time versus money, work , 2 commentsOh, lady. Stuff White People Like wins again with yesterday’s post on dinner parties, a subject I’ve written about on a few memorable occasions. The following little essaylet, first posted on Everything2.com on September 1, 2001, tells the story of one such occasion. (Writing it was another, and I suppose reposting it here is yet one more, in a very meta way.)
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For years and years, my parents have belonged to a club that treated its members to gourmet dinner parties, sometimes in restaurants, but also for some time hosted at members’ homes and prepared in a prescribed potluck style by the guests, who were given recipes for dishes selected to fit the evening’s theme. In addition to these smaller seasonal events (four times a year; you figure it out) the club — ominously named The Establishment — used to meet in its entirety twice a year for an annual formal, black tie dinner in January and a much more informal outdoor picnic/barbecue in July. The venues for these latter two events were fixed for years, at the homes of the club members with the most extensive silverware, glassware, and flatware collection, and the largest back yard, respectively. But I digress.
As a result of my parents’ participation in those black-tie dinners, I learned quite a bit about the workings of the dinner party, first-hand, by working as part of its catering staff (with the help of a rotating roster of friends recruited to help) for five years in a row (the pay got better every time, especially when I returned to “the annual dinner” as a starving college student). However, I believe that it was as a result of this experience that I failed to earn a potentially valuable scholastic distinction during my senior year of high school. (more…)
