Les Bonnes Choses

It has become a tradition here in Evanston to host what my mom calls "orphan dinner", where Amy, Gill and Rebecca and I -- all far from our families -- have Sunday dinner together. This being Easter weekend, things got kicked up a notch. Amy was over on Monday making a mountain of potato and cheese perogies to feed 8 adults and 1 child. Also on the menu: grilled vegetables, bruschetta and a ham butt.

Cleaning up the dishes wasn't too troublesome because I tried to clean up as I was going along while I was preparing the food. We also used fewer dishes than I had expected because two of our guests were unable to attend. The biggest difficulty I encountered was in dispatching the leftover ham. Apparently pork is value priced in these here parts, which is why we came to have a 12 pound pork leg to feed 6 adults -- almost two pounds of pork per person (I don't include the 3 year old in the calculation because he weighs less than 35 lbs, and eating that proportion of his body weight in pig meat in one sitting would require boa constrictor DNA). The bruschetta appetizer, perogies and grilled veggies were stiff competition, so naturally there was quite a bit of leftover ham to be cleaned up. Ziploc bag after Ziploc bag filled with meat. It struck me at the time just how daunting the logistics must be for an axe murderer.