Mom and Dad for dinner

Last night Mom and Dad joined us for dinner. Not too long ago, Mom had mentioned a dish her father used to make when she was younger--she said he found it in Women's Day magazine and it was called "Colonial Chicken;" and what really 'made' the meal was the giblet gravy he served with it. I looked it up on the Internet and found a recipe for the chicken. The giblet gravy as Mom remembered it was a cream gravy, and that took a little longer, but I found a recipe and invited Mom and Dad out for dinner and to see the house. Mom asked if she could bring her little shih tzu, Lucy. Of course she can--all those years she always let me bring my 50+lb. dog when I visited her house, and I am going to say 'no' to a well-behaved little thing like Lucy? No. So all three arrived about 4:45. Lucy checked out the house pretty thoroughly, and decided she could stay. She didn't take to Tom right away, though--which is understandable, since he growled back at her, and barked at her, too!

Anyway, I set the table with my damask tablecloth that was a gift from Tom's parents early in our marriage. I used my Polish pottery, Uncle Vernon's wine glasses that Tom's sister Laura kept for us all these years until we moved back home, and the brass candlesticks Cathy had given me for Christmas two years ago. It looked very nice. Dinner went together fairly well and we sat down to a nice meal. Dad had brought us some wine to celebrate the new house, and we toasted to a long and happy residence and enjoyed a lovely meal.

For dessert, I had gone to the library for some diabetic cookbooks for some ideas, and one recipe jumped out at me--Kaiser Schmarren, an old German recipe. Having recently learned much of our ancestry is German, I decided to make it. It's a crepe with a fruit and nut filling. Not bad, either. I could see it for breakfast, too, although I need lots of practice making crepes!

After dinner we visited for a while before Mom and Dad headed home. Lucy went with them,of course.