Tell Me About Your Most Surprising Dinner Guest(s)—Here’s Mine!
In 1990 Teri and I built a home on a hilltop behind the Mondavi Winery in Oakville, California. The land was a rocky, rugged 20 acres carpeted with tall golden grasses and highlighted by groves of oaks and Douglas fir and outcroppings of serpentine rock. The site was spectacular but demanded attention, especially the labor of “weed-eating” each spring to keep the grasses at bay and thus lessen the fire hazard to our home. I often thought about putting guests to the task as a work-eat arrangement. Dinner guests arrive in the agony of hunger, and they’ll agree to do anything in the short term (replanting the front flower bed took only a few minutes one evening) for long-term gain (dinner).
Once when Teri was on an exotic adventure trip, I gave a dinner party for 8. I ushered my friends into the living room, served wine and engaged in animated conversation, but not a speck of food appeared. After awhile some of the dinner guests went into the kitchen and cooked a delicious dinner. So control and power, blended with a little group activity, are hallmarks of any good dinner.
Several years ago Teri and I gave a dinner party for our long-time publisher and friend Phil Wood to celebrate the publication of Fast Appetizers. He arrived wearing one of his signature billowy polka-dot outfits, created especially for him by a Hawaiian artist, and carrying an armful of wines and copies of his recent cookbook publications. Other friends arrived. I cooked madly as course upon course appeared only to disappear. Massive numbers of wine bottles were opened, and the din rose as one of Phil’s authors led the conversation on the custom of eating bugs in other cultures. He described how the Vietnamese coax tarantulas from their underground dens and then batter and deep-fry the hairy spiders, which led to much theorizing by all of us about suitable condiments.
Meanwhile, sunset transitioned into inky blackness with faint starlight since the installation of an outdoor lighting system had never been a priority of our “work-eat” program. A sudden frantic banging on the pantry door silenced the group. Then more banging. We rushed to the pantry door, and there stood an agitated shepherd, waving his arms and motioning into the darkness. His flock of several hundred goats, brought in by a neighbor for the purpose of “weed-eating” the spring grasses, had broken through the fencing and was moving across our hilltop, devouring not just grasses but roses, Russian sage, low limbs on our olive trees, and the vegetable-herb garden. We couldn’t see the goats, but the sound of their mastication and the image of our hilltop laid barren sent our group into an unbalanced frenzy. Teri supplied flashlights, and after much tripping, shouting and pushing (I fell down and was trampled by goats), we managed to push the intruders back through the hole, secure the opening, and return breathless and disheveled to the dining table.
Surprising dinner guests had entered, eaten and been expelled. “Weed-eating” had been completed in a matter of minutes. And the “work-eat” program, disparaged by some, already had me planning the next dinner party.
Wonderful visual picture — can see the whole thing — including Phil Wood’s attire!
Funny. I just love Hugh’s sense of humor.
Not sure if this is where we tell about our dinner party so I’ll put it here.
It was an evening in 1976. I was hosting a going away dinner party for the Baron Philippe de Rothschild who was returning to France and his beloved Chateau Mouton following several months in Santa Barbara, California. My good friend and Chinese cooking teacher Hugh Carpenter — I was in one of Hugh’s very first classes — prepared the dinner as his bon voyage to Baron Philippe. Hugh presented one fabulous Chinese creation after another. Baron Philippe was in heaven as were all my guests with the great treats they were devouring. Following the Mongolian Hot Pot course, chef Hugh removed the charcoal burning hot pot out to my terrace to cool while he continued the feast. I had recently moved to fancy new condos on the beach of Montecito and was on second floor, so no back garden to sit it in. The dinner was a marvelous success. Late at night as I was putting the last wine glasses away in the built-in bar in the living room I noticed the most beautiful celestial glow from my terrace.
Walking out there I discovered a red and orange perfect circle in the flooring of the terrace, wood painted to look like outdoor marble, where the Mongolian hot pot had cooled. The fire department came immediately and patched terrace was soon converted to a Japanese terrace with specially shaped trees in pots and flooring of big pebbles.
BEING AT YOUR NAPA SCHOOLS AND YOUR BEAUTIFUL HOME ARE AMONGST OUR FONDEST MEMORIES.
I can’t tell you about a surprise dinner guest but I can tell you that we hosted our first cookbook club using your Hot Appetizer cookbook and it was a surefire hit. I run 3 sessions of our cookbook club. We pick a cookbook and all members make one recipe and bring it to our meeting. That way we taste test 12 recipes from one book at a time. People share stories about their interpretation of the recipes and it’s a blast. Thanks Hugh and Teri for producing such great books.
Similar situation to beverly. Had a Western theme 40th birthday party for my wife Kris in a large industrial building in Orange County.
30 foot grill with hot hot coals. Ended party late and did major cleanup. Pushed grill over in asphalt yard and hosed down coals. Next morning i get a call that the building is on fire. Upon arrival the whole yard is on fire. i say to myself oh S__T i’ve burned down my own building. Lucky to find out it was a fire by a transient next door to the building. I’m more careful at the end of parties now not to clean up until sober the next morning. it could be my fault next time.
Hugh–your dear Mother is smiking down–she wanted so much for you to write. You are a wonderful raconteur with all your years of education shining through. You put us other writers to shame. The Dunne school taught you well. (or was it Midland?) Thank you for keeping me posted. fondly, Julianne P.S. Warick and Marcea and Hewitt are all cheering BRAVO, HUGH!!!
Well, my suspicions are confirmed - it’s not just me - and it’ not my crazy mother! Anyone who gets a knock at the door, and Joseph and his flock are there standing to be let in, probably has seen the bottom of one too many really good bottles of wine! And touche, because I have shared many with you, and these magical times are the basis for the splendid peppered conversation we share while overseeing our masterpieces we’ve perused so many times, I cannot count - I am one of the very luckiest Graduates.
My avante garde dinner parties were strong in number and colorful with friends. Often, I have drawn upon my inspiration gained during fairytalesque weeks in Napa and San Miguel, after which I have returned to my comparatively humble homestead and attempt to replicate the magic we captured in a Mexican Hacienda spared from the catastrophes of the Mexican Revolution, a cave that has never been used as a dining space, or upon a mountain top in castle-like homes of strangers we call friends, after the indescribable weeks that I call “my annual week with Hugh,” more aptly referred to as Camp Napa and San Miguel.
Hugh, I am so glad that you were not harmed by the goats.
How on earth did you get them out? You don’t need to publish my reply, Love, Marcy
After buying an old farmhouse in the “cotton patch” of Fort Bend County Texas I invited a couple from the “city” to dinner in our new down home setting. While the man’s name was not Thurston the wife was a Lovey ringer in body and spirit. While dining a possum ambled into the dining room obviously not all right in the head. I knew this not because of my extensive possum knowledge but only because my now ex-husband (who grew up in the country yelled “that possums not right in the head”) and as he ran for his gun the wife vaulted to the top of the dining table, hit her head on the ceiling fan and transported the meal to the floor. Thank goodnes they were gone before the gun shots.