Dinner Party

I am completely exhausted and I have one hour until it's time to set the table and two hours until time to start cooking dinner.

We started our day at Wegmans. I was thrilled to find a one-gallon glass sun tea pitcher for $5.99 but distraught to find pineapples were $3.99 and that cored pineapples were $5.99. That's nuts.

I spent $48.76, which I'm counting toward the August budget even though it's July 31. I was bummed about that until I remembered I bought the sun tea pitcher.

I bought:

• 2 pounds Wegman's butter, one salted, one unsalted, $1.50 each
• one pineapple, $3.99 (grrr)
• the large bottle of coffemate vanilla chai spice creamer, $2.99
• 2 pints heavy whipping cream, $1.49 each
• 3 packages of celestial seasoning tea (blueberry, almond, and berry), $2.29 each
• 1 liter of Orangina, $2.49
• 3/4 pound sliced ham from the deli, $4.31
• shredded gruyère (domestic?), $3.60
• smoked gouda, $3.47
• the sun tea jar, $5.99
• 3 lbs bananas, $1.09
• 6 ounces raspberries, $2.50
• strawberries, $2
• ground nutmeg, $2.99

Before we left, I made the pear soup and I had set the brioche out and shaped it. When we got home, I baked it and brewed iced tea (green with berry). Then we went to the liquor store for wine. My husband came home early for lunch, so we had leftover crêpes and then I prepped the pineapple crumble and the zucchini cakes.

At 3 p.m., I'll set the table.

At 4 p.m., I'll start the crôque monsieur.

When the crôque is in the oven, I'll fry the zucchini cakes. While we eat the first courses, the pineapple crumble will bake.

Recipes:
Follow these links:

• Brioche-- from The Paris Cookbook by Patricia Wells, also should be accessible via 'French,' 'bread,' and/or 'brioche.'
• Chilled Pear Soup-- Vegan, eileen bresslin
  
• Zucchini crabbiless cakes-- The Imus Ranch Cookbook, 'vegan' (Deirdre Imus calls it vegan even though she used eggs because she has her own chickens) and zucchini
• Perfumed Pineapple Crumble-- Venez Diner, C'est Prêt by Dominique Malet, follow pineapple or French or the name of the book
• Crôque Monsieur-- obviously French, it's from The Barefoot in Paris Cookbook by Ina garten
• Rye bread-- clicking on rye will show you all my experiments with rye flour

My daughter made me a lovely four-course meal:
Tomato salad (pictured)
Piled-High Sandwiches
A cheese and egg platter
Chocolate-Carrot Crumble