{"id":457,"date":"2008-03-08T19:29:37","date_gmt":"2008-03-08T18:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/?p=457"},"modified":"2008-03-08T19:29:37","modified_gmt":"2008-03-08T18:29:37","slug":"dinner-is-served","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/?p=457","title":{"rendered":"Dinner is served&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\tTonight was it: the dinner with the menu I&#8217;d rather have avoided.  We spent the day skiing, which wasn&#8217;t too smart because we were tired.  But since we didn&#8217;t get hurt on the slopes, and we&#8217;d already paid our 85 Euros for the meal, we went.<\/p>\n<p>\tOnly about 20 people came.  That&#8217;s half as many as normal; many scared off by the dining options.  But it wasn&#8217;t really a bad thing having a smaller group.  It made it easier to get a chance to talk, at least a little bit, to everyone.<\/p>\n<p>\tThe evening started off with an aperitif.  Cocktail.  It was some champagne and lime concoction.  It was really good.  A little too good, I had three.  There were trays of puffy appetizers to go along with it.  I stuck to the ones that I could identify what was sticking out of the puff.  Green olives.  That was it, really, green olives.  Bill tried the one with a hot dog bit.  Hot dogs here can be tricky, so I passed on those.  I did eat one that was pretty plain, except for some poppy seeds sprinkled on it.  Some sort of cheese was hiding inside, but it was mild, so it was ok.<\/p>\n<p>\tI didn&#8217;t wear a watch, so I don&#8217;t know how long we all stood there before moving to the tables for the meal to start.  Long enough that I&#8217;d downed lots of puffs and for one of the other ISE&#8217;s to come just short of gnawing on his arm.<\/p>\n<p>\tThe entree (appetizer) was either something with gizzards&#8230; which was what I&#8217;d gotten&#8230; or toasted goat cheese&#8230; which is what Bill had.  The gizzards were just sitting on top of some lettuce, so I scooted those over.  I ate the stuff I recognized and left the gizzards and the giant slab of pate (cat food, as one person at the table called it) on the plate.  Bill gobbled up his goat cheese.  I hate goat cheese.<\/p>\n<p>\tNext came the main course.  I had the quail.  Bill had the fish, which was risky because it was a kind we&#8217;d never heard of served with \u0093fruits du mer\u0094&#8230; fruit of the sea.  The quail came with a sort of sweet dark sauce and veggies.  It wasn&#8217;t bad.  Honestly, tasted kinda like chicken.  It was served in four chunks, so I didn&#8217;t have to look at a bird or pull it off the bones.  Although an early bite did include something small and crunchy that I assume was a bone.  That I had to spit out into my napkin.  The veggies were superb.  So was the gratin dauphinois (creamy potatoes).   But I had a little trouble getting excited about the prospect of another bite of bones.  Bill&#8217;s fish was ok.  I tried a bite of it.  It had some weird pureed fish filling.  He did pick a small, complete, octopus or squid (I didn&#8217;t count tentacles) out of the fruits.  Gross.  Most people seemed to clean their plates.<\/p>\n<p>\tThe cheese course was next, which I didn&#8217;t even realize we were having.  The new people were both fascinated and grossed out by the fromage blanc.  It&#8217;s a little like yogurt.  You get this blob of white, creamy, cheese in a bowl and a big dispenser of sugar next to it.  Because you need a lot of sugar to counteract the tang of the cheese.  A couple people opted for the fromage sec (dry cheese).  I didn&#8217;t know you had a choice, but I&#8217;m far too scared of strong cheese to take a chance like that anyway.  <\/p>\n<p>\tThe cheese was followed by the dessert.  Mine was chocolate something-er-other.  It was ok.  Bill got what I thought was described as fruit salad.  It was fruity sorbet with a merange coating.  <\/p>\n<p>\tThat, of course, was followed by coffee.  I asked the waiter for milk and everyone else at my table laughed&#8230; they figured if he was going to bring me some, it would likely include his spit.  I don&#8217;t know if it did, but I did get some.  <\/p>\n<p>\tThe evening turned out to be a very pleasant one.  We had a very good time.   And the food was fine.  Ok, except for those bones.  Now, I have a year to worry about next year&#8217;s dinner&#8230; since I am supposed to plan it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tonight was it: the dinner with the menu I&#8217;d rather have avoided. We spent the day skiing, which wasn&#8217;t too smart because we were tired. But since we didn&#8217;t get hurt on the slopes, and we&#8217;d already paid our 85 Euros for the meal, we went. Only about 20 people came. That&#8217;s half as many [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}