The Annual Solstice Party!

We held our annual solstice party last night. I started cooking the day before – a potroast pork roast for the cassoulet, Woody roasted a turkey breast and I made my annual triple chocolate pie. It’s my own invention and amazingly rich. Friday we got up early and tidied for the party. Then at 11:15 we started cooking. Melenie arrived from Hadley at noon. We had just begun the cooking of the Great Northern beans for the cassoulet. Between us ALL we made Italian stuffed mushrooms, chickpea feta salad, curried turkey salad, the gravlax double package, shrimp and my own cocktail sauce and of course a huge pot of the cassoulet. It has pork, lamb, duck [2 kinds] and kielbasa as well as of course the INcredible sauce that develops and the fabulous beans. We had twenty-nine friends over and several of them brought food as well.   We had four desserts and several other entrees. Not everyone knows each other as there are friends from town, from WOMR, from past connections, my assistant and her husband, and a friend’s mother who had just moved up here from New Jersey the day before. I think everyone had a great time and of course the rescue squad had to be called when one of the guests fainted. Seems to happen every other year. Nothing serious as it turns out – combination of dehydration and fatigue with her blood pressure medicine. Tthe cats were shut up in the back of the house until the party thinned out toward the end as I don’t want them venturing out into what was 13 degree weather or outside in general to freeze or be eaten by a coywolf or fox or great horned owl. Then they came out to join the cleanup crew, especially the boys. They were showing off to the remaining women, climbing up to the rafters and jumping down. Today we’re exhausted and after rudimentary cleanup and putting chairs and tables, etc, back in place, we plan to laze around today and eat leftovers for supper. But I do have to start feezing Brussels sprouts as Woody picked all the remaining veggies from the garden before the arctic cold set in. We had never have one fourth so many sprouts before, so while we ate them the night he brought them in and I gave my assistant two whole stalks and we’ll eat them tonight, there are still too many to eat fresh. That’s the one thing I hope to do this afternoon [it’s noon now; I didn't wake up till 9:15 this morning. Normally I get up @ seven], I’d like to exercise and try to get back into writing my assay on Adrienne, but I really do feel completely lazy. It’d hard to imagine doing anything much. All week I’ve been reading mss. for my June intensive poetry workshop. It’s filling rapidly. I’ve read 46 mss. so far. They come in one or two or three a day. I try not to make poets who’ve submitted wait too long to hear back. I have places for 12 and 2 alternates, that’s it.