Tuesday October 25th, 2016, Long Beach, CA
I love
dinner parties, or just normal dinners at my place or at friend’s homes. Great conversation, new food ideas, plans for
future shenanigans… all good things. So
after a few weeks of being lost in my own world of travel and works, I decided
to reconnect with some quality people.
Enter Lani and Alan. Somehow it
went from, “Come over to my place for dinner” to “your place or mine” to “a
bunch of people at your place”. Sorry
guys, didn’t mean to put all that effort on you guys. My turn next, I SWEAR. However the good thing about having a dinner
blossom into a dinner party, is that quality people choose quality guests. Luckily, I snuck in there under the radar
without anyone noticing.
Janis
and I are the first ones to arrive, about 10 minutes before the end of the
stated arrival window. You can’t seem too
anxious you know, gotta arrive fashionably late. Lani and Alan however decided that they could
‘out cool’ us and show up after us. They were fighting traffic around Long Beach
picking up supplies for dinner. So after
Lani got her rant out we all settled into the kitchen to watch Lani work her
magic while we judged her technique, not really. I actually brought in a dessert that needed
some preparations, so I got to work rolling out a pastry dough that I made the
night before. After it was about the
size of a dinner plate, I put some fresh blueberries and raspberries in the
middle and folded the ends in to make a Golette. I’m pretty sure I’m spelling that right
because I haven’t been able to find the recipe for it anywhere; but I was
taught it in my cooking school so I swear it’s not made up. Anyhow, after it’s baked and golden brown,
you serve it with ice cream (lactose free in this case for the intolerant one)
and it’s super awesome. By this time the
other two, Hanna and Michelle, had arrived and Lani put them to work.
Lani
is Thai, so she’s got skills with Thai food bestowed upon her from her super
Thai mother. That’s great for us because
Lani’s dinner selection was shrimp spring rolls and pork fried rice while Alan
made chicken on the grill just in case the spring rolls flopped. Why would the spring rolls suck? Because we have to make them ourselves, and
we don’t have Thai moms to show us what’s up.
If we were rolling lumpia, I’d be like “Get out the way, I’ve got
this.” Alas, this is not the case. So good call with the chicken Alan, that’s a
safe bet. Plus, Alan rolled a monster
spring roll which had just about everything on the table in it.
Want
to know who these people are? I’ll give
you a tibit about each one. Starting
with Janis on the left, she’s always got perfect hair and a pretty wicked
fashion game. You can find her on her
badass carbon fiber, space shuttle, super fancy road bike laying miles of
tracks down while making stretchy bike clothes look good. Michelle comes from the movie world and has
worked the sets of many major Hollywood films such as Transformers and Bad
Santa. She’s got an impeccable eye for
art, fashion, and shoes; not gonna lie, I often stop by her desk to dork out on
women’s fashion. Note that this is a
self-proclaimed “I look terrible" day, so you be the judge, I’m calling
BS. Hannah is in the 1 o’clock position
and is rocking the hell outta that red hair.
She’s an integral part of the VG sales force; she’s gonna make sure that
we have customers that want to send their satellites into orbit to make
Launcher One a force to be reckoned with and all of us employees with stock options very happy people. She’s also lived in
some great international locations which makes me very jealous and has the British accent that somehow
makes everything she says more convincing yet hilarious at the same time. Lani is a former body building competitor
turned safety specialist. So basically
if you don’t wear your hard toed shoes in the shop, she’ll come kick your ass
and leave you smelling like coconuts and baby oil. She also books flights back to Denver like an
addict looking for its next fix. “I just
book a bunch of them when they go on sale.” These are flights Lani, not groceries. Whatever, she’s fancy. Alan is in the next picture serving up our
dessert, he’s definitely one of the nicest guys I’ve met but also likes to
shoot pretty much everything with a gun, a bow and arrow, or just with a
piercing stare. He may like food more
than I do, which is saying a crap ton.
He dances without reserve when he’s got something good on his
plate. I absolutely love that, assures
me that I’m not the only one.
No comments:
Post a Comment