Hockey dinner.

We hosted Hockey Boy's high school team for dinner at our house last Thursday before their game. I did a terrible job documenting the event, as I neglected to take a picture of the pretty yellow rose and blue hydrangea arrangement on my counter or of the blue and yellow balloons that I tied to the hockey goal that perpetually adorns our front yard. In fact Hockey Boy would have MUCH preferred that I take pictures of those inanimate items because he about died when I showed up with my camera in the rooms where the boys were eating. (Do I have any other purpose in life apart from embarrassing him? He would be hard-pressed to think so.)





My co-hostess for the evening was an executive for a prominent Dallas-based department store. She arranged for the store's chef to prepare the dinner for us. I usually do the food myself for anything at my house, but my week was so crazy that I really wasn't going to have time, so this worked out well.

Our menu was Penne Pasta with Pesto and Grilled Chicken, Caesar Salad and Foccacia bread. Everything was absolutely delicious! The boys piled their plates high and still came back for seconds. I served pitchers of water and Powerade and couldn't get over how much of those they consumed.

I made brownies using my mom's standard Joy of Cooking, recipe. I had some Scharffen Berger unsweetened chocolate left over from Valentine's, and wow, did that make for some tasty brownies. I was glad that I nibbled on the crumbs as I cut the bars earlier because those boys scooped up those brownies so fast that there was nary a trace of them left on the platter!

I was most impressed with how polite and appreciative the boys were. The team has to wear collared shirts and khaki pants before games, so they all looked so handsome, and every one of them said "please," "thank you" and "yes ma'am" and stopped to thank us before they left the house. It was hard to reconcile them with the sweaty, aggressive boys I'm used to seeing on the ice.