ragani

Here it is, Sunday already, and I have yet to mention anything about how well the fondue party went.

For starters, due to some recent late nights I have had at work lately, my boss was cool with me leaving early on Friday, so I had time to do some pre-party shopping. Being her typical out-of-work and happy-to-help sweet self,

noirem met me at work to be my lackey for the afternoon. Earlier that day I took

bdot up on her call for house cleaning work and had her do a quick run through to get the stuff I never have time for (thanks!). It was nice to come home and only have the vacuuming left to do (a chore I don't mind doing too much). That gave noirem time to do some food prep, and me to (eventually) fuss with the ingredients.

By 6:15 or so, a couple of early arrivals with food prep needs (and willingness to help) showed up. By 7 (the posted start time) there were about 8 people there all working on setting-up. Yay for guests who pitch-in, the party was already underway! The guests continued to arrive at a steady pace, and fondue was soon being consumed at alarming rates. Volunteers were at hand whenever a new pot of fondue needed to be prepared, which kept things moving along.

Unfortunately, my BF, the co-host of this house warming party was stuck at work for the beginning. He finally just ditched work, stopped at the store to pick-up an angel food cake, and arrived well past 8. After a shower and a change into his sexy Utilikilt, he joined the masses in the cheese fest, and soon was his more relaxed social self.

For those who care, the menu was double batches of three different cheese fondue (traditional swiss, cheddar & onion, and cambazola), with a spiced red wine for cooking meats. For dessert we had a dark and milk chocolate, and I tried a new one: Drambuie Cream. Although I forgot to mix the cornstarch properly to prevent getting lumpy, the flavor was a nice addition to the rich chocolates. Yum! As for what to dip into the yummy fondue selections, we had way too much to list here.

I have been hosting a fondue party every year for 5 years now, and you would think I would be an expert by now. What I can say is that I learn something every year. Last year I learned that there needs to be some fondue ready to consume early on to appease the hungry fondue fanatics shortly after the party starts. That was an easy assignment since Caroline had volunteered to bring and make the cambazola fondue, which can be made in the fondue pot where it will be consumed, and therefore out of the way of the busy kitchen. She even brought her own fondue pot, so I did not need to do anything aside from find her an outlet.

This year is a lesson that I should know by now, but it really hit home. A fondue party of this magnitude requires a lot of help, so each year I have tried different ways to share the work among the many guests who are happy to help. A couple of times I assigned people to make the fondue, and last year, that backfired when it meant that those bringing the fondue spent the first half of the party cooking, while the rest of the guests fussed about the lack of fondue. This year, I stuck with the idea that I would make sure to provide the fondue and ask the guests to bring "dippables" to share. For the most part that worked. However, I did not get enough feedback from the guests for me to be sure there would be enough to dip with, so I also provided some bread, meats, veggies and desserts items.

OK, the bread was a good thing. However, although the types of meat I got were not ones anyone else brought, and the dessert items noirem and I came up with were rather well received (especially the frozen cheesecake), there was way too much food! All sorts of people who never mentioned a thing to me brought meats, veggies and fruit. It is difficult to be upset about this, so I was not, but I did end up sending people home with lots of food (and still have way too many leftovers - in fact I think I smell something yummy being cooked up for brunch right now!). So, this year I was reminded that, aside from bread, I probably should not provide anything to dip and leave that up to my guests, trusting that even if they have been too lazy to tell me, they are probably going to bring something anyway.

All in all I think we ended up with about 30 guests.

emberleo was delighted to discover that the guest list had covered so many of her social circles that she was quite a social butterfly.