Donner, Party of 9

Dinner Party #2 (the day after Dinner Party #1) started off less-than-ideal for several reasons:

1. We were absolutely exhausted due to a lack of REM (thanks, hangover-sleep).
2. We asked all of the couple friends we invited to bring a single friend; we had a dinner party with three couples and our sister.
3. We, for the second time in a row, attempted a completely new meal.
4. Half the eggplant we bought was rotten. This was discovered after researching how "brown" a normal eggplant should be. (Remember: overachievers. We Google everything.)
5. Eggplant takes three times as long to prepare as the recipe suggests - and five times longer than anything else in the entire world.
6. Ladyfingers are twice as difficult to work with as eggplant, making tiramisu a colossal waste of time.
7. Anchovies are gross.
8. We ran out of alcohol. Far too early.

Despite the "cons" of the dinner party, a fabulous time was had by all because, to quote Jill, Jill Zarin, we "run with a fabulous group of people." (The quotation must be read with an obnoxious Long Island accent. And by "obnoxious," we really mean "regional" and apologize to all of our Long Island followers.)

Because one of our nearest and dearest is a vegetarian (we promise not to hold this against her), we were not quite sure what to do. All our recipes involve some sort of meat, usually in large quantities, and the "v" is a dirty word. However, we searched high and low to steal a recipe from one of our favorite restaurants. Thus, "Broke 'n Single" eggplant parmesan over hot naked fettuccine, along with a side of homemade Caesar salad, was born. (We would like to ignore the disastrous tiramisu we spent too much time and money preparing and instead focus on the leftover Key Lime pie we actually ended up serving...)

Totals for the evening:

Bottles of wine: 10

Guests for the evening: 9

Cons: 8

Time spent making tiramisu: 2 hours

Time spent throwing tiramisu away: 2 minutes

Long Island followers: 0