Fluffbuff

The weekend started off in the worst possible way with me getting a virulent case of food poisoning Friday evening, being up sick all Friday night and being a useless vegetable all day Saturday. In spite of everything I decided not to call off our holiday open house today and I am glad I did because today I was fine. The only problem is that I only had this morning to prepare everything before friends started to show up around 2 pm.

By the time I was done shopping, it was already noon and I had less than two hours to cook something. I made industrial quantities of my chunky rustic tomato soup while setting up the cold dishes in the dining room and kitchen. As I was wrestling the tomatoes, trying to pass them through a veggy mill directly into one of my big pots, a piece of the mill snapped out of place and tomatos went flying everywhere. Some big chunks landed on my head and I had to take a second, unscheduled shower. Fortunately, people were fashionably late and by the time the first guests arrived everything looked under control. There's still some tomato splatter I couldn't get to on one wall, close to the ceiling, but I'll deal with that tomorrow.

The open house worked out really well with people showing up and leaving at diferent times but with enough overlap for most of them to meet everybody else.

Kelvin got to hang out with the guys — he loves that — and then managed to steal an entire filet of smoked trout.

Our friend Chris with Kelvin

Thank you to all who came. We missed those who couldn't; we hope to see you soon.