Dinner Guest #35 - Meals on Wheels

Sunday, September 9, 2012

One of the hardest Sunday dinner complications has become the last minute

CANCELLATION

On Sunday morning, we found out that our dinner guests had a sick child and could not come over.  While I expressed the appropriate empathetic comments and promised to invite them again sometime, my mind flashed over the large quantities of food that would go uneaten.  I fretted,

“Can I really secure another dinner guest in eight hours?”

Most of our dinner guests have been invited several weeks in advance.   I generally try to avoid last minute dinner invitations.  I worry the invitation may come across as insincere or somehow less respectful of another family’s social calendar.   I wonder if it rudely implies:

“Hey, I obviously didn’t put much thought into having you over, and I know you are not doing anything important tonight, so why don’t you come over to dinner only because I cooked too much food….”

After learning that our good friends, the V. family, also had a sick Daddy, I quickly found a solution to my problem:

Meals on Wheels

Sunday afternoon I cooked up my usual storm of dishes:  barbecue pork sandwiches with cole slaw, fresh corn salad, baked potato skins with cheddar cheese and bacon, fruit salad, and homemade oatmeal cookies.  However, instead of tidying the house, scrubbing all the peanut butter stains from the kitchen chairs, and mopping the floor, I simply packed up the meal into foil containers and delivered Sunday dinner promptly to the V. family at 5:30 pm.

Our family ate the other half of the same meal and enjoyed a quiet Sunday evening to ourselves.

I could get used to this.