Dinner Party

We interns had an Italian food dinner party on August 3 for several of my coworkers, and it was so much fun! This was during dad's visit, and he made his famous salad, which was great. He really wanted to use red wine vinegar in the dressing, but the closest thing he found was "grapes vinegar," which wasn't actually very close. But dad's salads are always amazing, and this one was no exception.

John made a red sauce with lots of veggies, and it was served over spaghetti. It is hard to find the right kinds of canned tomato products to make spaghetti sauce here, and I will admit that looking at all those vegetables in the pan, I wasn't sure how Italian the dish would be, but it was delicious!

Sarah and I made pesto from walnuts, fresh local basil, garlic, and some real olive oil, which is fairly rare here. Sarah had taught me how to make pesto earlier, and I turned out to be a good crusher and chopper, so I got all the ingredients small enough using a very dull knife and improvised pestle, and she put it all together and supervised the proportions. We boiled some penne for the pesto, and my contribution to the meal was some of that local bread, leepairshka, which I'd topped with garlic butter I'd put together. It made a pretty respectable garlic bread substitute and certainly tasted good! Here are some pics from our evening.

Everyone: Here everyone smiles for the camera. Say cheese!

The Girls: Here are some of the girls, chatting and laughing. Aidai is next to me; you see just a sliver of Sarah's forehead, the side of Asel's head, and the back of Roshanna's.

The Guys: Here are some of the guys. I think they talked politics for a while, and dad told some jokes.

Chatting: Here John looks like he's saying, "Well, I'd say the chances of that are about 20 percent."

Pretty Anya: Anya smiles at the camera here, while Aizada listens carefully to Stas.

Pretty Roshanna: Roshanna looks amused, smiling at the camera while Asel tells a story.