Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Dinner Party…and Other Visitors

Taking a short break from blogging about our busy September 2015 trips to Florida, South Carolina and North Carolina, this posting focuses on guests and dining at our home in East Tennessee…


Half of our little wine tasting group was scattered around the country when it was our turn to play host in January.  So Laurie and I decided to up the ante a bit and just have a dinner party with lots of wine on the side… From left to right are Dick and his wife Susan, Irv and his wife Martha and my better half, Laurie. 

As you can see we just had a “light dinner”!  We always overfeed so I always end up with a lot of lunch and sometimes even dinner leftovers!


We had started out our little soiree with mixed nuts, M&M’s, shrimp with cocktail sauce, Boursin cheese and crackers.  Susan brought the shrimp plate and a terrific salad with broccoli, cauliflower, bacon, raisins and onions with a nice homemade salad dressing.  Laurie breaded a pile of chicken breasts and thighs with Italian breadcrumbs and other spices and then baked them.  They were accompanied by 2 bowls of seasoned roasted red potatoes, gravy and a big basket of crusty dinner and rosemary sea salt rolls with butter.  

Martha is our “go to” dessert queen!  She certainly didn’t let us down.  The photo above is is a slice of her raspberry freezer pie with a graham cracker crust.  It was amazingly good and it was a great way to top off an evening of food, wine and conversation!  


We have had other visitors in recent days… These local whitetail deer stopped by to trim Laurie’s drift rose bushes in the front yard.  One of the does is keeping an eye on Laurie’s photo taking efforts.


Then they decided to help us with our pruning up close to the house.  One worked on this Loropetalum bush and the other spent her time trimming up our ‘monkey grass’.



One of our 4-legged dinner guests looked back to see if she and her fellow diners were still welcome.  Most of our plantings have never been hurt by our local deer population, except for the hostas which take a beating every year but keep on coming back to serve as a nice brunch when needed.  We do enjoy our most frequent locals…deer and wild turkey alike.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a bite to eat!


Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

4 comments:

  1. Looks like the best kind of parties - good friends, lots of great food and plenty of wine. As far as your "gate crashers" in the yard, they are hard to get rid of. When I used to see them in our yard, I ran out and made noises to run them off - to no avail I might add - but was a total waste of breathe.
    Sam

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  2. Looks like a good time was had and hate we missed it. I like having the deer do a little pruning but sometimes they don't know when to quit - they take my cousins shrubs to the ground up in WV.

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  3. Looks like a fun time for all with great food and wine. Did you share that meal with your 4-legged friends?????

    Hugs,
    Betsy

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  4. I love this pic of you all!
    And love yours visitors, what beauty and cute they are !

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