The Dinner Party of Doom! (part 2)

So you know how there are some people that have aspirations? Like, they really enjoy something, so they try to actually get good at it? This girl Laura is so aspirational, she actually throws dinner parties for 14 people at a time, because she says she ENJOYS it. The nerve.

And then she actually makes like, a ton of food. For OTHER people. Just to watch them enjoy it. I know, it's beyond comprehension. I've been trying to wrap my head around it now for days. So she like, sends out invitations in advance and plans this really large menu that involves really time consuming prep. She shops for weeks ahead of time. And does she do the decent thing and demand money or some other form of material payment for all this work? Of course not. Does she politely wait until everyone has shown up before starting to chop vegetables and assemble stuff? As if. She does like, all this annoying cooking work ahead of time. Someone needs to stop her before she hurts herself.

Unbeknownst to you, the party had collectively consumed 7 bottles of red wine within the first hour. So we will all live to 97. It's a scientific fact.

The biblical Samurai of Death by Red Wine, illustrated in a way that says "look, I'm an actual artist deigning to use your artfully placed coloring books. You all are inferior."

This is, by the way, the expression most people make when talking to Jere.

Really yummy Beef Bourguignon. I would sort of like to have an entire plate of this again, right now please. With a side of egg noodles.

Our lovely and way overqualified for her job cook, Laura. I didn't get a shot of our hostess Christie, but lets just say that the rug and sofa set in her living room would make you weep with correctly hued decorating joy.

The chicken mole was easily my favorite dish that night. It was so chocolaty, it was eating dessert for dinner. But that was later of course. After she added the chocolate. I couldn't take a picture of that because I was too busy eating it a lot.

So I think lots of girls, no lets say every girl, has moments of such complete adorableness, that we should all probably have paparazzi around us to capture that, so when we're old and considered completely out of the game we can hang these pictures somewhere on our bedroom vanity mirrors and remember how young and sweet we were.
This is Lauren, having one of those moments.

Chocolate peanut butter cream cupcakes. What.

Finally, and having nothing really to do with the dinner party but being really important nonetheless, at the exact moment that this picture below was taken, the song playing in the bar was Candlebox. It's now recorded for posterity. Long live the West Side of the Flats, refusing to remain relevant for 20 years and counting.