Rooftop Dinner

Throwing a dinner party is not difficult in my friend circle.  When I tossed the Challenge #3 description to my besties, the first responses were “I’ll be there!”, “What can I bring?”, “Should we dress in theme?”.  All of the stresses expected to accompany the hostess position faded.  Why Project Food Blog challenges continue to give me school girl excitement, I don’t know, but I’m down with it.

And then I read the challenge details, thoroughly and repeatedly.  Oh, so this is what hostess stress is?  For the first time in ages, I understood the meaning of the word ‘challenge’.  New tastes and exotic flavors?   How am I supposed to feed my friends new tastes and exotic flavors!?  I can’t even get Val to eat hummus, the only food memory I have of Lauren is sorority house bacon and mashed potatoes, and Katie can’t step foot inside my house without having a Clarke induced allergy attack.  Challenge or… logic puzzle?

Lucky for me, I quite dig logic puzzles.  I became a scheming and note jotting machine.

Accommodating Katie was going to be easier than I thought.  After all, I do live 2 floors above the raddest rooftop pool in Tampa.  Oh!  And there are grills.  I would have to keep this in my back pocket as the final piece to my meal planning puzzle.

Valerie and Lauren…  They both eat salads (now).  And fruit!  Who doesn’t like fruit?  First course – check!  And while brainstorming dishes with Val, she gave me a genius and simple solution for the main course: just make her some chicken.  Phew!  Fish for us, chicken for her, done.

I charged the girls with bringing wine and that was that.

I prepped mostly everything the night before.  All that was left was grilling meat and chopping fruit.  We poured our wine, packed our plasticware, and headed to the pool.

Much to our surprise, this was the first night that felt like fall!  Both wine and conversation flowed alike as we admired the night, the view, and the company.

I broke for a bit and headed over to the grill for the final step of luxury dinner preparation.  The menu?

I plopped the platter on the table and prepared my plate as an example for my guests.  We passed, poured, admired and… DUG IN!  Prior to this meal, I had never had the foresight to marinate meat a day in advance – what a difference it makes!  The chicken and fish, especially the chicken, were unbelievably tender.  The grilled fruit with goat cheese and spinach?  Insanely fabulous!

One by one we cleared our plates and topped off our glasses.  Did I mention we managed to kill four bottles?  It was a ladies’ night meal to remember and I fully intend on taking advantage of the rooftop this season!