Now I know we all make mistakes. Oversights happen, things get misplaced etc. I think (and I hope!) I had the WORST case of forgetfulness EVER yesterday. Have you ever had that dream where you are at school and it's the day of the big exam and you completely forgot to study for it? The panic that hits is overwhelming, the fear of failure is immense. So that's how I felt when the front door opened last night at 5pm and in walked our invited dinner guest, Shirley. We'd been so caught up in our fire fest that the fact that I'd phoned Shirley up last week and invited her for supper, marked it on the calendar, included it in the week's menu planning and bought the groceries for the meal, inexplicably and unforgivably slipped my mind.
It was the most horrendous feeling of shame! Not only had I not prepared a thing, I had NOTHING I could make a meal out of on such short notice. All meat was frozen, no casseroles were on hand to microwave and NO dessert baked. I ALWAYS have a good dessert when someone's coming over. The kids were greeting her and chatting as I raced back and forth in full panic mode, freezer, pantry, fridge.... I'd already started re-heating plates of leftovers for the kids & Murray & myself. There was NOTHING I could do to pretty this up. I did find some meatballs in the freezer. I dumped those in a pot, threw some bottled sauce on them & slammed them into the microwave. Then I threw some butter in another pot & melted that on the stove and made the world's fastest batch of chocolate sauce. So I had 2 plates of corned beef and cabbage (Murray & Shirley), 2 plates of pork stir fry (Honey & Lovey) and slowly defrosting & reheating meatballs and some leftover rice from the stir fry for me. Sweetie wasn't interested in any of the meals until the end when all the pork was gone.
God love Shirley. She didn't bat an eye or question why the heck I was serving 3 different REHEATED meals for supper. All perfectly normal right? omigosh. The extent of humiliation was incredible. I sat down and came out with "uh, we're just sort of having an assortment tonight!" and left it at that for fear she'd run away if she found out what I'd done! During the frantic rummaging, I'd noticed I still had some whip cream left from the Angel Lush Pineapple Cake the other day (expired angel food cake had to be used right away so I couldn't save it for Thursday's supper). There were also some bananas on the counter and maraschino cherries in the fridge! We weren't having "nothing" for dessert, I was serving banana splits! That HAD to be planned right? No one just pulls that out of thin air!
At the end of the meal I fessed up and told her this wasn't really her dinner and promised a repeat invite with an upgraded menu! She was a trooper and said she had no idea and thought I must have been cooking all day to have so many options for the meal!
After dinner Lovey played for her and she gave the kids advent calendars that have messages behind the daily window. They're excited to check them out and get started on December 1!
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