Black Dinner !

Oh My God! I have never been so tired! (I didn't really do myself any favors by going out drinking until 3:30 am the night before and only getting 5 hours sleep, but that was not the biggest contributing factor to my exhaustion) The whole day, up until my friends started arriving I kept repeating to myself that I am NEVER doing this again, but half a glass of wine into the evening I started really enjoying myself. I was too busy cooking to take any photos, so there aren't too many, I'll try and annotate them with general bullet points.

The Calm Before the Storm

The Good:

• My brother spent ages copying out the menu on the back of black and white postcards I got at the Tate, saved me having to explain the creepy stuff people were going to be eating.
• I'd found some really nice plates and glasses in charity shops over the last couple of weeks, um... I think that's the bit I enjoyed most about having a dinner party
• Somebody brought me a bottle of wine with a picture of a dead fish on it! Ha ha, morbid minds
  

The Bad:

• The table was a little too small for the 9 of us

Different Shades of Black

The Good:

• Boyfriend made the tapenade while I was in the shower, what a guy!

The Bad:

• This was all anybody had to eat for almost two hours because I was so behind with the cooking!

Kind of Last Supper Kawaii Looking Picture of First Course

The Good:

• Everyone liked it, phew! Instead of making cute tiny raviolis I ended up producing giant flying saucer disks because I didn't leave myself enough time to do it properly. According to some of my guests they looked like rubber sexual fetish devices, um... thanks?

The Bad:

• Three days on and my fingernails are still black from the squid in and black carrot juice. I'm starting to have to tell people that yes, I do wash!

Two of My Friends have iPhones - Wow!

The Good:

• Feijoada was tasty, but I ended up giving everyone giant portions
• Most of the people didn't really know each other but somehow (yeah, I think we all know how) everyone got on, enough to crack really weird jokes, like, a few people asked for White Russians instead of Black Russians! What a bunch of renegades

The Bad:

• Don't look at my messy ass living room in the background

I didn't manage to take a picture of the dessert, but it went down as well as the rest of the meal, two people asked for seconds and the Japanese girl from my office - the only person who'd had black sesame ice cream before - said it tastes exactly the way it should do :)

All the stress and running around was worth it, and I'm just so glad that those brave souls made it into the wildest wilderness of North London to join me.

Finished with a very stingy cheese plate and black grapes, which people were too full to touch and then there was a mad dash for everyone to catch their last trains home. Phew!