After having cancelled our guests for Tuesday because we were both ill, our Thursday company called and cancelled as well because they had the same thing! That wasn't such a bad thing, since that gave us more time to recuperate before yesterday. We are both feeling much better now.
Frédéric's coworkers helped us move in to the house last July, but we hadn't yet found a time to have them over to thank them. So yesterday they came over, accompanied by wives and children, and we had a barbecue.
The thing is, when you have French people over for lunch, you should probably be prepared to offer them dinner as well. We didn't actually keep them here for dinner, but everyone had arrived by 12:30 pm and the last ones went home at 8 pm. And then they didn't all go home, some went to the home of some others for dinner. We were invited too, but since Benjamin was already in bed asleep, we had a good excuse to let our day stop there. Not to mention that since it had rained earlier, but cleared up, we ate outside - consequently we had quite a lot of housework to do to get the house looking decent again since the kids tracked all sorts of mud in the house.
We spent almost the entire 7 1/2 hours at the table. Since it was more of an informal meal, we only had these courses:
- apéritif (veggies & ranch dip, chips & guacamole)
- plat (BBQ ribs & sausages) + side dishes
- cheeses
- digestif (armagnac, a strong alcohol meant to help you "digest" the meal)
- dessert (lemon cake & tiramisu)
- coffee
We skipped "entrée" (appetizer, not the main dish like it means in English) and green salad (would have come before the cheese).
After they left, Frédéric mentioned that one time when we had lunch with some American friends, those friends were having different guests for dinner. He says only Americans can do that, since if we had invited other guests for dinner, they would have arrived around 7 pm and our lunch guests would still be here!
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