The journey from fat to fit. Road trip, woo hoo!

So my FIL is visiting from Chicago.  He has four sons.  He’s staying with us, two of the other sons live within 30 minutes of us and 4th son lives in Bend, Oregon, 3+ hours away.  So 4th son came into town and grandpa says “Hey, I’m going to cook for everybody Sunday night.  You get the day off.”  So I say okay, sweet, all I have to do is tidy up and he can do the cooking, because, honestly, HOW HARD CAN IT BE, right?  Fatal error in my thinking there, but at this point it did not occur to me that I AM having a dinner party.  I think I am off the hook.

So grandpa goes to the grocery store and stocks up on chicken breast (about 800 pounds of them) and sweet potatos and a sack of red potatos for potato salad.  I say I’ll make a green salad and I go to the farmers market for that stuff.  Grandpa tags along and buys some zucchini.  And I went to the store myself and picked up some chips, salsa, avacados, nuts for munchies before and popcicles and creme puffs for dessert after.  At this point, it’s kind of starting to feel like I’m having a party here.  No munchies? No dessert? Come on grandpa, bring your A game.

So it’s about two hours until people arrive and I say, “Are you going to marinate that chicken?”  and he says, “Huh?”

And I mention, “You should probably boil the potatos now to get that potato salad going,” and he says, “I don’t really know how to make potato salad.”

So I spent my “day off” in the kitchen boiling potatos, chopping onions, peppers and chives to make potato salad, marinating chicken, sauteeing zucchini, grilling sweet potatos… plus made my delish chopped salad and lemon vinegar-soaked cucumbers while grandpa drank beer on the deck with his boys and grandkids.  All told, I served a great meal to 11 adults, one teen, and five kiddies.  DH did do the actual grilling portion, which all turned out great.  FIL came in to help clean up and DD9 says, “That’s OK grandpa, you can go play cards.  I’ll help mom.”  And I thought oh, how cute, and then realized it was after 10 pm and she was just angling to stay up later : ) 

Entertainment for the night: DD9 and her girl cousins (age 6 and 4) put on a dress up fashion show.  DD9 gave a violin recital.  And DD15’s bio mom drank too much and fell over in the grass in a camping chair, which thrilled me no end because I am an evil and vile human being : )   Then my sisters in law both left to take their kids home, but the boys stayed on, and poker happened until 1 am.

I don’t know that I have mentioned before that DD15 is my stepdaughter. I have had her since she was 3, and for the last 12 years we’ve been doing this WE’RE ALL ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY thing that makes many people ill but works for us, MOST of the time. 

I am trying for the life of me to remember what the point of this post is? haha.  Oh yeah, so I am proud of myself for putting together a healthy meal that was delightful.  And I am a little scared of myself for turning into my mother, because, OMG, I totally took over and saved the dinner from doom (he was just going to throw the chicken AND red potatos on the grill with salt and pepper, hello?).  I remember the many family parties when I was a kid that pretty much consisted of my dad entertaining and my mom toiling and I said NEVER will that be me.  But I did all the food prep, all the cooking and all of the clean up by myself while the menfolk lounged.  Don’t want to make that a habit!

I’m actually not pissed about any of it, either.  We had a fun night.  I must be morphing into some kind of domestic diva or something.