Western Welcom Dinner

My mom and dad hosted this delicious dinner to welcome some friends fresh off the plane from Europe.  (Or as fresh as they could be after 48 hours of flights and layovers.)  The first friend is Megan, a short but feisty Scottish woman I met while studying in Tours, France.  The second is her boyfriend Julien, a French man originally from Nantes with an uncharacteristically French sense of humor.  They live in Antibes in the south of France.  I’ve visited them there and demanded they return the favor.

We started the evening with some homemade guacamole and tortilla chips.  The guacamole included our standard family ingredients: avocados, seasoned salt and pico de gallo salsa.  Julien enjoyed some Colorado microbrews while Megan and I enjoyed some cider.  She had a Woodchuck while I had a Magners Irish cider.  With dinner we enjoyed a bottle of French red wine that they had brought with them.  It was: Château Moulin à Vent- Moulis en Médoc.  It was a strong flavored red that went very well with the meal.  The vinyard website describes the wine as having "a deep dark robe, a powerful bouquet, suppleness and a lot of elegance."

The main dish was a mixed grill BBQ.  My mother prepared chicken and steaks by marinating them in a roasted pineapple and habanero sauce.  My dad grilled them on his shiny copper-colored barbecue.  We also grilled some sweet Olathe corn.  The guests were recruited in shucking.  In fact, that was a new word for them.  Since Julien grew up on a farm, he was familiar with shucking corn, though he did not know the word in English.  Megan, however, had never shucked in her life.  I recounted the many times and places I’d shucked.  On the kitchen table, out on the patio, etc.

We also had some roasted red, white and blue potatoes to go with the meat.  I love those little round potatoes.  Just the right size.  Not big and intimidating like those Texan potatoes.  We also had a big salad to pass around.  My parents managed to satisfy another craving Megan had.  She had visited the U.S. before and fell in love with a salad dressing.  I think you know the one.  Yep, good ol’ ranch dressing.  My mom made sure to get some nice buttermilk ranch dressing to go with our salad.  She’s just a dream-fulfilling kind of woman.

Our dessert could not be more American unless we stuck American flags in it.  We used the glowing leftover charcoal to roast marshmallows and make S’mores.  Two squares of graham crackers layered with Hershey’s chocolate and an ooey gooey roasted marshmallow.  I may or may not have had three of them.