You see, we had already been planning to have a couple of friends over for an evening we were referring to as "Jason Statham Film Fest, part deux." But, since it's been a while since we had people over to hang out and talk and eat, I decided it might be fun to invite a few more people. Friday being almost exactly 6 months after Christopher's actual birthday, I sent out the "Surprise Half'Birthday Party" invitation last weekend (after clearing it with the "official" invitees), and then waited to see whose schedules were still clear with that little advance warning. (Personally, Christopher and I almost always have open calendars on Friday nights. We're usually of the "It's Friday, let's collapse. We'll do something on Saturday" mindset.)
As I waited to hear whether we would have 4 people or 20, I started to prep. I did my grocery shopping on Tuesday, hiding bottles of soda pop in the basement bedroom, and trying to cover up the massive amounts of extra food in the fridge. Of course, Christopher came home from work on Tuesday and, while digging around for something for dinner, he came across the two rounds of Brie. I explained that one was for Friday night and one was for next week when my folks are in town. (Well... sort of...)
Luckily, Christopher is currently taking a French language refresher course, so I knew he'd be out of the house on Wednesday night. I spent that afternoon/evening baking a (box) cake, which I had wrapped up and stored in the basement bedroom before he got home. To cover the smell of chocolate in the house I ordered pizza for dinner. (Hmmm... Now that I think about it, Freud might say that I baked the cake as an excuse to order the pizza...) But the cake still needed to be frosted.
Christopher's usual night for yoga class is Tuesday, but he had moved it to Thursday this week. Even so, I wasn't sure if he would have to work late and miss yoga. If he took the class, he'd be home at 7:45. If not, he could be home as early as 5:30. As soon as I got home from work, I set about making Chocolate Buttercream Frosting (from the Wilton website) and getting it onto the cake. With a little cream cheese frosting left over from last weekend's baking, I decorated the cake and tossed it back into the basement. Then I toasted up some bread rounds (to use for bruschetta on Friday), and rubbed them with garlic. By the time Christopher got home, there was definitely no chocolate aroma in the air.
So far, so good.
But I still had all of the appetizers to make, and we were both going to be home on Friday. I cleaned the house, loaded the CD player, and gathered a few supplies as he ran errands in the morning. In the afternoon, though, Christopher decided he wanted to do a couple of desserts for the evening. I couldn't tell him "no" without blowing my cover, so I slid off into the other room to await my turn in the kitchen. Around 3:30 I started putting together some Thai Vegetarian Spring Rolls (the basic recipe is here, but the first time I made them they were really bland, so I traded out the bean sprouts for chopped radishes, doubled the ginger, and added some chopped red chilis), and their accompanying sauce (if you use the very nice dipping sauce recipe on that site, please note that it should be 2 TEAspoons of cornstarch, not 2 TABLEspoons).
I also chopped up the tomatoes, onion, garlic and basil to be put on top of the garlic toast rounds for "do-it-yourself" bruschetta. And took out puff pastry to prep it for making our baked brie. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, Christopher started asking me whether I was making way too much. Luckily, I'm known for making way more food than we need, so I was able to shrug it off.
The first guests (the "expected" ones) showed up at 6 o'clock, bearing gifts and really amazing cheeses (which we put out on a cutting board, once Christopher wrote out labels for each of them). We settled in to munch on some appetizers and turned on the first Jason Statham movie of the double bill: Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.
Just a few minutes into the movie, the front doorbell rang. Christopher opened it to find another friend of ours, holding a small gift and a bag of ice. We chose not to explain what was going on, yet, as I pulled paper plates napkins, plastic cups and forks, and bottles of soda off of the basement stairs. Finally, a few minutes later, Christopher mentioned that maybe he should have made more dessert, at which point I said "Hold that thought" and disappeared into the basement, returning with the cake.
By the time The Transporter was in the DVD player, there were 9 people and a miniature Schnauzer named Fred hanging out in the living room eating spring rolls, cheeses, bruschetta, baked brie, half-birthday cake and Kouing Amman (which nicely served all 9 of us -- even though we've been known to eat one when there are only 2 of us).
As we trundled off to bed, Christopher commented that maybe it's a good thing that he's sometimes a little dense. And I breathed a huge sigh of relief that the subterfuge was done and I didn't have to deal with my stomach being in knots any longer.
Either way, to quote Lewis Carroll, via Walt Disney: If there are no objections, let it be unanimous! A very merry Unbirthday to us!
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