The art of entertaining

I remember when I first arrived in Belgium, I was very amazed with the way that people entertain. Of course, at first, I was quite annoyed at the fact that every time my uncle and his ex-wife had someone over for dinner, Tatie often made a fuss (sorry :-)) about the china, the silver cutlery, the table clothes, the candles, where to sit your guests...etc, and then you got to eat only one dish at the time :-). I thought of VN, every time we invite somebody, we put all the foods on the table, people site where they want, no fuss about the china and least of the cutlery as we use chopsticks :-).

As I live longer in Belgium and begin to understand that everything is like an art here, making food, drinking wines, so of course inviting people is also an art, an art to entertain your guests, I have become fond of this. Well, I am not really into china or cutlery but more about foods and drinks :-).

So, I have now taken a wine tasting course. I used to like world wines a lot, maybe because they taste good and cheaper than the French wines but to my surprises, after several wine lessons, I begin to really love French wines (yeah, the French really know how to make something an art :-)). I have been to Bordeaux, Champagnes and visit several vine yards or champagne houses, and every time, I fall in love with the region for the know how of the people. Everything from the tasting techniques (which is really cool) to how to distinguish the "au nez" and "en bouche". Of course, I know nothing of whether a wine taste like honey or caramel (every time the teacher says that a wine tastes like honey, I just frowned and said "really?, I can't detect the honey smell" :-) thinking maybe I should put my nose into the honey jar in the weekend to really know how honey smells :-). And yes, spitting out eight glasses of very good wines is easier than I thought it would be :-0), I who never refuse a glass of wine hehehe.

Anyway, last weekend I invited an older couple friends (they are 50s something, I know the husband through the chinese lessons in the past) for dinner to also introduce my mom. I was so excited thinking I would have a chance to show off what i had learnt about wines :-). Turned out the lady did not drink any drop of alcohol :-), and I had reserved different sort of wines. In the end, I had to settle for the happiness of being able to speak broken Flemish to her because she only speaks Flemish. That's another thing, I thought I learnt nothing with that language, it seems I just need more practice. Hmm, I really should read more in Flemish.

I hope this coming Sat, my favourite crowd will be luckier with some bottles I chose for them :-0)