The party was a great success, people. Everybody ate and drank a lot. Except me who hardly got a chance to try anything.
The guests loved the food. The black-eyed pea salad was an enormous success (thank you, R, for the recipe!) I marinated it overnight in the dressing I made of olive oil and pomegranate balsamic vinegar. The guests were attacking it so fast that I had to steal some from the table or I’d never have gotten a chance to try it.
The avocado wrapped smoked salmon was very popular with N. I think he ate all of it by himself. Of course, there wasn’t a lot of it to begin with because smoked salmon is expensive.
The Ukrainian response to meatloaf was greeted with a lot of joy. I made two kinds, differently spiced. One was walnut- encrusted and the other one was pumpkin seed-encrusted.
Everybody loved my “everything salad.” The “everything salad” is what you make out of all the little things left behind after cooking. Just shred them, mix them all up, add the dressing, and people will spend the entire night telling you that you created an exotic bouquet of flavors.
The two pies that I made (gooseberry/blueberry and strawberry/peach) were wildly successful. And so were the hot sandwiches served cold. Plus there were numerous things on sticks. And hummus with crackers.
The shocking thing about the evening was that the most popular drink of the night was Diet Coke. The 30+ guests didn’t even touch any of the hard liquor we’d bought. They had very little of the wine. They drank the sangria I made (which seems to have been too strong), and that was it. N was very impressed by how virtuous and moderate these academics were.
Even though everybody was mostly sober, I did catch a few whispers about the discussions of my tenure case by the tenure committee the day before.
And I also got some really good gifts. The long-time dream of mine to have a fish-shaped dish to serve my salted herring (selyodka) was fulfilled by a colleague from Venezuela. I have no idea how she guessed that I wanted it.
Conclusion: parties are not a bad thing at all.
Clarissa's Blog 
“The shocking thing about the evening was that the most popular drink of the night was Diet Coke”
Sounds about right. The midwest is not a place associated with much social drinking, and people have to drive.
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I should have invited the Med school people. Those drink like fishes in every region of the world.
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One word: archeologists
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Seriously?? I did not know. I asked over some people from the school of Theater and Drama but, shockingly, they didn’t drink either.
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Oh, the med school people would have been all over the hard liquor. Everyone’s about the gin, the vodka, the scotch and the whiskey. In my experience, lawyers and law school students drink more than med school students and doctors though. I’ve never seen any gathering of doctors get visibly drunk but half of them are on call on any given night anyways.
Labor Day weekend is a prime time for cops to set up speed traps and DUI checks. Did you observe anyone alternating drinks with diet coke and water?
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This is such a small town. The entire drive from my place to pretty much everybody else’s place is maybe 5 minutes at most. Plus, not only the drivers didn’t drink. Nobody drank. I saw a mother trying to persuade her college student daughter to have some Scotch but to no avail.
And we had GOOD, high-quality liquor.
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I’m not surprised the party was a success! The photo of your table had me computing the mileage from my corner of our fair state to yours. I would have drunk some of your liquor! Could you post the black-eyed pea salad recipe?
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If you are ever in the area (St. Louis), tell me and I will me happy to invite you over!
The black-eyed pea salad includes the peas, obviously, red onion, capers, parsley and I also added some fresh cucumber. Plus the balsamic vinegar olive oil dressing. It has to marinate in the fridge overnight. Yum!
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It sounds like you had lots of your department colleagues there. Many Americans are cautious drinkers when they are at events with lots of co-workers. I’m sure I’ve read the “Don’t get drunk at work parties” at least a dozen times in articles with workplace advice.
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