Dinner Party Disaster!

So…my better half and I were hosting (on the Saturday just passed) a long awaited dinner party for a bunch of friends; the theme, GREEK!

Count down: 1 week till dinner guests’ arrival
We actually spent a week preparing for this dinner, having even changed the furniture around the house (a little), created a DVD to showcase our recent holiday pics and videos, not to mention the menu I put together for it. Oh, I forgot to mention the week before, we actually trailed all the food to see how it would work and it was perfect.

Count down: 6 hours till dinner guests’ arrival
On the day we were so well prepared, with much of the food having been prepared several hours prior to our guests arriving we were lapping up the free time, if you know what I mean ;)

Count down: 2 hours till dinner guests’ arrival
Placed the tiropitakia (cheese pies) in the oven. They came out looking umm, sort of raw…hmm I thought, that’s never happened before.

Count down: 1 hour till dinner guests’ arrival
Placed the mousaka in the oven and the second round of cheese pies.

Count down: 40 minutes till dinner guests’ arrival
Went to take out the cheese pies and they hadn’t even browned…in fact the oven was still damn cold! The oven just died!

Count down: 38 minutes till dinner guests’ arrival
I notify the boss and in a somewhat reserved fashion, she freaked out.

Count down: 36 minutes till dinner guests’ arrival
I freaked out!...not as reserved.

Count down: 35 minutes till dinner guests’ arrival
Thought of cancelling the night. Opted to call my sister so as to hijack her oven, alas they were out!

Count down: 34 minutes till dinner guests’ arrival
Called mother-in-law and asked her to pre heat the oven, I’ll be over in a jiffy

Count down: 33 minutes till dinner guests’ arrival
We both freaked out heaps at this stage, but I was now on my way to the in-laws.

Count down: 31 minutes till dinner guests’ arrival
Called our guests and asked them to delay 30 or so minutes.

So though we had bought a little time, our panic was going to keep us unsettled for the rest of the night.

I cooked the food and was back at our place only 15 minutes AFTER our guests had arrived…eeek! Basically I didn’t get any sort of a chance to take any photos as I was very much in a state of “this night’ll be much better sitting in the past”.

Now our guests were fantastic and very understanding of everything that had happened and thought the company was (as always) first rate, as hosts, we never really settled and remained anxious.

So much for the chocolate cake I planed on making the next day.

The Menu:

Greek night menu Sept 2010 -