PlazaJen: Passion Knit

The whole point of Social Suppers is to socialize with friends while you assemble 8 or 12 meals. Well, it's sort of a selling point. The main point of it is that you go in to a big kitchen area and they have all the ingredients chopped and prepared and set out, and you assemble meals by following the recipes, and when you're done you have a freezer full of meals that are ultimately cheaper than going out to eat. Not necessarily cheaper than going to the grocery store & doing all the chopping and preparation yourself - but show me the weekend in my life where I've created 12 meals in 2 hours, bagged them, put cooking instructions on them and put them in the freezer. Nope. Plus you can try different things you might never make on your own, like "savory chicken enchiladas in pumpkin sauce".

One thing about my personality is that it's not consistent with one categorization. I'm not anal, I'm not organized, but man, I'd have made one hell of a factory worker. Put recipes in front of me with directions on how to do things? And I turn into a machine, unable to have much of a conversation, solely focused on the task at hand. Projects like that to me are things to GET DONE. Get 'er done. Crank the handle, turn that mothah out. So I found myself not responding to my friends when they tried to talk to me, and I completely missed the duet my friend Beth was trying to sing with me - "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart, she was Elton John and I, apparently, a drug-addled Kiki Dee, unaware that we were even onstage. I was FOCUSED, people.

But, the good news is that we have lots of fun recipes to try, the quality of the ingredients was great - we'd tried a dish from their open house & were impressed with the meat quality. And even though everything still requires preparation, it will take some of the "what's for dinner?" mystery out of our lives. So if we're happy with it, I'm sure I'll do it again, and maybe this time? I'll have a glass of wine and try to suppress a little of that inner-John Henry and his recipe-making hammer.