Oct 10th: Italian fiesta picnic

Picnic on the floor

Cultural lesson…fiesta plans were 7-11 at our apartment.  Our Swedish friend Elin came a fashionable 15 min late with her salad.  The delightful Germans and Swiss came a bit after that.  The first wonderful wave of Italians came about 1.5 hours after that with bags of groceries to prepare risotto.  I abandoned the kitchen and left them to do their thing.  Magically at 10, when the risotto was ready, the second wonderful wave of Italians appeared with prepared pans of Eggplant Parmesano.  That’s when we finally ate.  I heated up my now cold chicken and spinach with peanut sauce (I have a secret source- canned peanut butter from middle eastern grocery store) and we all loaded up our plates and sat on the floor, picnic style.
There were about 15 of us, and it was MUCH LOUDER  than at my 50^th birthday party in May when we had a gathering of about 75….  In terms of decibel generation, I figure there was about a 5:1 ratio between Italians, and every other nationality represented at our party.  Of course there was the obligatory breaking out into song now and again.  We had a fun time till they left at about 11:30…of course they were heading out to go dancing! They were just getting warmed up!