Downton Party Tonight

Polishing the Silver

Cleaning Candlesticks and building chairs

Table is mostly set

What a long day! I wanted to write last night but finally at 2am we just simply fell asleep, but hardly could stop laughing by then.

The goal yesterday was to polish the silver flatware and service, purchase food, set the table and decide and make some of the foods. Nearly everything got done. We will just pick up some flowers today, finish cooking and Dale will pick up a few things we didn’t have time to get yesterday.

So here is the long anticipated menu:

1. Appetizer: by Aletha, wine is Sherry and maybe a little Port.
2. Soup: Potato Leek Soup; wine Gewürztraminer
3. Poached Salmon with a Mousseline Sauce; (As served on the last meal from Titanic 1^st Class menu, April 14, 1912); wine- Pinot Gris
4. Roasted Chicken au Jus; wine- Pinot Noir
5. Wine Jelly- this is made with an entire bottle of Zinfandel wine.
6. Roasted Beef with Potatoes and Green Beans; wine – Cabernet Sauvignon
7. Salad: Asparagus with a Mustard Vinaigrette Dressing
8. Cheese: Various Cheese selections; wine – Champagne
9. Desserts: Treacle Tart as per Season 3, Episode 1 and Rice Pudding; wine- Pimms and Port

Now we do know that we have 9 courses, have understood this for a couple of days. But reality hit us last night when making up a schedule for getting these dishes on the table. Most must be hot, served to each person, wine served and all in a timely manner. So when putting this all into a timetable we realized that we will only have 15 minutes for each course from start to finish as we are starting dinner at 7pm and Downton starts at 9pm. I know 15 minutes seems like a lot of time but we must go around the table to each of the 11 guests, let them serve themselves, sit down eat our course, get up and get the next one ready to serve.

Some courses will be quick, like the Wine Jelly, which by the way is really different. I made it last night and we had a taste. All I can say is it is different. But it might just be a nice change after all of the rich food before.

But what got us laughing is the thought (no offense to our guests who might read this) of telling our guests that they must eat, “stop talking, eat”  “No laughing, eat, quickly”! It should be quite an evening.

And now I’m off to get 2 chickens in the oven, will pre-roast then cut them up and warm them tonight. I’ll cook as much as I can this morning: soup, boullion for the Salmon, then maybe warm the Wine Jelly and drink it!