I headed up to the far burbs for the first dinner party of 2010 at N’s house. There are 5 cats in that house, most are unfriendly. There’s a lot of N’s art all around the house. Naturally, as she’s an artist. What’s a dinner party without cheese and crackers? And grapes! I ate an unfairly large share of these grapes.

There was tons to eat. Bread, with butter and nutella! Little tiny crab cakes with a remoulade. A made those. Some little phyllo dough puff things filled with spinach.

Garlic broccoli, and some random flatbread type of stuff.

Rice and some dip for the flatbread!

There was even a warming tray to keep the food hot! Hello chicken marsala! Hello veggies! And hello veggie ravioli! A made the ravioli too. It was all freakin delicious. I loved all the red and white dishes too, they were adorably old school.

For dessert, a ginormous fruit tart! It wasn’t much of a tart, it ended up being pretty much just a cake with fruit on top, but it was still quite tasty. We ended up trying to play this game, Quelf, later on in the evening, but it wasn’t so easy. There were too many people and too many of them were drunk, so game playing proved quite difficult. But we’ll have to give it a shot another time. Thanks N for the lovely party!

I was talked into attending a Celebrate the Macallan event with promises of hot hors d’oeuvres and free booze. Well, we certainly got free booze, along with a high-tech lecture on scotch and scotch-making, but there were no hot foods to be had. In fact, we got a little plate of cheese and crackers and grapes, but that was it. And with no dinner in my belly, man, did these drinks get me. In fact, a table next to our table dared to ask H/A if they could have our cheese. He hesitated for a moment, and I was going to tackle someone if he somehow said yes to them, but he came to his senses and said no. How dare you ask for someone else’s free cheese? It’s our free cheese!

I don’t know about you, but I can’t drink scotch. Even if it’s free. It burned my lips with every sip. Oye. And after drinking fancy expensive scotch (10, 12, 15, 17, and 18 year-old versions) we went to Wendy’s to eat real food. Man, a downtown Wendy’s on a friday night is crazy!

I came home from thanksgiving with a giant bag of persimmons. Did I stop at the grocery store or the produce store? Nope. It was just my parting gift. The hosts from thanksgiving have this amazing persimmon tree in their front yard.  Actually, they have two, but the one in the backyard is not so fruitful. But this one tree alone, produced about 500 fruits this year. Can you believe that? From one tree?

Persimmons are a strange fruit. I don’t tend to meet many americans who are familiar with it, let alone who have eaten it. I grew up with them, so it’s one of my favorites. But also a fruit I eat very rarely. They’re not abundantly available in stores, you have to look for them.

There are distinct varieties, and the ones from this tree are of the nonastringent variety. It sounds very clinical, I know, but it really isn’t. Basically, an unripe persimmon cannot be enjoyed. If you eat an unripe persimmon, it will leave your mouth feeling and tasting fuzzy. It’s an extremely unpleasant feeling. I do not recommend it, even on a dare. But in a nonastringent type of persimmon, there’s less of this fuzziness initially, so you don’t have to wait so long for them to be edible. And these types are actually sort of crunchy, like an apple or a pear. But the astringent ones, you have to wait until they are soft and mushy. And once they are, they are amazing. And what does a persimmon taste like? Well, it tastes like a persimmon. There’s nothing you can compare it to! Like an apple taste like an apple and an orange tastes like an orange, a persimmon simply tastes like a persimmon.