In an old house

I was thinking this evening about how my love for cooking came about and noticed that my love for entertaining came about at the exact same time. In college, I moved in to this great old house. The house had been divided in to 9 apartments and we had the entire first floor. It had a wild floor plan. To get to both bathrooms, you had to walk through someones bedroom. I lived with two girls, and one boy. One semester, the boy studied in the Netherlands and we took the opportunity to make-over the dining room. It was its own room, off of the kitchen. There was a door to the family room, otherwise it was completely closed off. There was a great window seat and bay window looking out on to an alley. Not much of a view, except during parties when you could peek out the window and see people making out, ha! So, the dining room had always housed a great old oak table, mis-matchy chairs and poster upon poster of Jimi Hendrix and The Grateful Dead. Once our roommate, the owner of the posters, left for a few months, we marveled at the fact that we could create an intimate dining space and maybe, just maybe, have some dinner parties. Over the course of a few weekends, we re-defined a great space. We took down all of the posters, covered all of the holes in the walls, deep cleaned the icky carpet, and went to several thrift stores. We bought pillows for the window bench, odd framed paintings for the walls, several old lamps, and some dinner ware pieces to bring out on special nights. Turns out we had tons of special nights, about 3 dinner parties a week! Granted, we weren't making gourmet meals, but we would dress up and cook up lots of random dishes. The grocery down the street, Dirty John's, where we would usually go for beer and gum, became our go to place for delicious wine and organic veggies and fruits. I think over the course of four years, I bought about 15 wine bottle openers from that place. During one of our soirées, I concocted a homemade tomato sauce for pasta. I think that is the day that I realized how much I enjoyed cooking, and that I could make something from scratch and have it taste good. I also loved having people sitting in the room next to the kitchen, having drinks and waiting for food that I was creating. Man, I loved that house. And the many months spent in that lovely dining room that we decorated.

P.S. I have been dying to try the Creamy Feta-Red Wine Vinegar Dressing that David Lebovitz posted on his blog in January. After work today, I stopped by the store and grabbed the ingredients, along with some romaine and roma tomatoes. All I gotta say is, that dressing is decadent as hell ;)

P.P.S. After carrying up 7 grocery bags in one trip up three flights of stairs and 75 mph winds, I realized that I was missing an onion. Is it wrong that I didn't run back downstairs and grab it?! It will be about 30 degrees tonite, I bet it's ok...