Saturday afternoon we hosted our first meal.  Granted, Roka came over a week ago and we baked cookies, made soup, and ate some food.  But that wasn’t an official meal, just cooks eating their cooking.

Right: The marble mantle has been installed and is decorated for the party.

Saturday was our first official meal with invited guests, a champagne brunch to enjoy the bottle that Ryeroam had asked Ken and Suchai to bring to us as a housewarming, after they visited him in Paris in September.  Since Ryeroam was in town to collect his grandmother and take her to the US for his graduation next week, it was the perfect time to open the bottle.

Ryeroam and I met through airliners.net, a website for aviation enthusiasts, which is also how I met Ken and a score of other people.  He lives with his partner in Paris, although in the time I’ve known him he has lived in Mexico City as well as Buenos Aires, all the while working on his degree in the United States.  It is a global village, I tell you.

Above from left: Chris, Ryeroam, Suchai, Ken and Tawn.

The menu was pretty simple and easy to prepare:

Individual spinach, mushroom and pine nut quiches

Mixed green salad with tomatoes

Homemade buttermilk biscuits (not pictured)

Assorted desserts from The Landmark Hotel

To wash it all down, we enjoyed a bottle of Laurent-Perrier brut non-vintage Champagne and a bottle of Vallformosa methode Champagnoise sparkling wine from Spain

I had also prepared a cherry pie, not knowing that Suchai was going to bring desserts.  Needless to say, there was no room for the pie.

The condo really sparkles when we have guests.  There are just a lot of nice spaces and it is a lot of fun to entertain.  The kitchen is sufficiently large, although we’re short on plates, bowls and glasses.  Once we have a small china cabinet we’ll round out our collection of dinnerware so we can match.