Entertaining: Even I can do it

Lately, I have been trying to be a little more social. I'm trying to take some time and get to know those around me instead of focusing all my available energy on my side-business venture. So, over the last few weekends I have hosted a couple Barbeques at my place. Well, not exactly my place. As you may know, I have been house-sitting/renting a rather large residence from a co-worker of mine for the last six months. This place is huge, practically just built, and the best part: I can park sideways in the garage! Oh yeah and lawn care and house cleaning are included. It's a pretty great deal.

All Good Things Must Come to an End
The owners are moving back in December, meaning I have to move again. I've started to plan out what area I might like to move to; if June's speedy arrival is any indication, December will be here before I know it. I would like to move closer to the downtown area and a little bit closer to work. My commute now is only 20 minutes, so I can't complain. But it would still be nice to be a little closer to save on gas and if I wanted to come home for lunch it wouldn't be so far. Plus, I'm always trying to think of excuses to go downtown and it's much harder to justify my excuses when it's a good 20 minute drive down there and I'm about as cheap as they come. But anyways, more on my housing search in the future, back to the BBQing.

Becoming an Entertainer
Since my time in this beautiful house, seemingly built for entertaining guests (as you can tell in the picture), is fleeting I figured I should take advantage of it while I've "got" it and entertain. These last two get-togethers were actually the first time I hosted a dinner since living on my own. It definitely was outside my comfort zone to cook a meal for other people, assuming you count BBQing as cooking. I think BBQing is a good choice to foray into cooking for other people because most of the food can be prepared before hand and most of it is either ready-to-go from the store (like chips, condiments, buns, etc) or pretty easy to prepare (like slicing tomatoes and onions). The only difficult part is the actual BBQing of the meat and that just takes practice and experience, which I have very little, part of the reason it was a little outside my comfort zone.

Preparation
I actually had fun preparing everything; getting a little creative with the presentation of the toppings, putting the chips in bowls instead of bags, etc. I have begun to notice that the presentation of things seems to be pretty important to me. For burgers, I got Costco meat and did a pretty simple rub on both sides of onion powder, garlic powder, and generous amounts of Lawry's Seasoning Salt. For hot dogs, I got Hebrew Nationals, all Beef and Kosher! My dad loves them, as do I. The hot dogs tended to cook a bit faster than the burgers so I learned to throw the hot dogs on after the burgers had a few seconds to cook. Also, I learned the value of having a "sacrificial burger" to cut open to double check doneness when you think they are ready to come off the grill.

Overall, I think the BBQs turned out very well, despite my uneasiness. I definitely look forward to many many more dinner parties in my future.

My Randomness
Sorry, but when I thought of the word "entertain" my mind went on this completely random tangent and I had to share. The Entertainer is a favorite song of mine and one of the few songs I have memorized on the piano. I love all of Scott Joplin's ragtime piano music. When I was growing up, my mom would always play his Maple Leaf Rag and I still love that one.