Spain 4, Italy 1: A fun night with friends (and the hangover to shake later)
We had some friends over for dinner last night, and it was lovely: six of us in all, dozens of stories, too many laughs to count.
Jessica and Brock were back in St. John’s for a visit, not too long after they moved to Ontario. Darrell and Matthew had had a late night celebrating the latter’s birthday (with decorations that truly were next level.)
I’ve joked that Jess and Darrell were among the “work kids” I loved working with at the newsroom. All of our guests are in their late 20s, and not that much older than Nick, our own kid. It was interesting to me as I moved through my career that I went from being the youngest person at Here & Now to being in the middle ranking of the newsroom, and ultimately not just older than most everyone else, but sometimes older than the parents of some colleagues. Life, it moves fast.
This was a repeat of a fantastic dinner we had last November, marking my own retirement and Jess and Brock’s pending departure for southern Ontario. It was great to see them “home” again, and I hope we get the chance to do it all again some time.
Martha made a dish we call Moroccan chicken, which is pretty Mediterranean: preserved lemons, olives, almonds, tomatoes and other flavours perfect for an August night. Dessert was tiramisu.
The Spain 4, Italy 1 joke in the headline comes from the bottles I saw this morning when I came down to make coffee. We had started off with a bit of bubbly: an Italian prosecco. Over dinner and the ensuing hours (it was a bit of a late night!), the six of us polished off some riojas and a tempranillo. Spain for the win, once again.
To give the bubbly a bit of summery bite, I added some limoncello that we made ourselves. Very slowly, I will add.
Making your own limoncello is not that difficult. You need a bottle of vodka and the rinds of a bunch of lemons (no pith, please). Throw it all together, put it in a dark place, and forget about it. In our case, literally. We started this batch … hmm, I’m not even sure when! On Sunday, we poured it all through a Chemex bottle with extra coffee filters, and added a third of a cup to the prosecco. Delicious.
As we talked into the evening, we opened another bottle, then another. All told, that’s probably more wine for me than I’ve had all summer combined.
No regrets, even as I shake off that unmistakeable lag of a hangover this morning. (Almost there, as I write this.)