Dinner at Our House

In which you invite me to dinner and I blog about it. If you want me to come to your house for dinner, email me at [email protected], subject line: Dinner at Our House.

[dinneratourhouse]

Dinner at the Abramovitz House: January 15, 2016

The Abramovitz House: Amanda, Bryan, Tebow and Zuzu the dogs

Location: Conway, Arkansas

Menu: Creamy Tortellini and Sausage, Sauteed Squash and Zucchini. Recipe here.

“We are on the back side of the building facing a small open field and then some woods. Our apt (#8) is on the bottom floor in the middle. There’s a doormat and a door hanger with an ‘A’ on them.”

Amanda’s directions to the apartment where she lives with her husband were impressively thorough, but she’d left out the part explaining the dark sidewalk leading to the back side of the building might be blocked by a 30-pound dog of an unknown breed, pretending to be friendly. The dog barked incessantly at me from a few feet away until Amanda opened the door to their apartment, giving me asylum.

“Oh! Is Preston out there? I’m sorry,” she said.

Inside their one-bedroom apartment, Bryan slices zucchini and squash while Amanda prepares something at the stovetop. She looks on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator and runs down the list of available beers—Shiner, Ruby Redbird, a milk stout.

“Do you think this is enough?” Bryan says, holding a mixing bowl full of the vegetable slices. It’s clear this is her kitchen.

After Amanda approves of Bryan’s work, he sets his beer on the table across from me and sits. Amanda slices Kielbasa on a plastic cutting board and puts it into a pot on the stove. She opens a can of peeled tomatoes and dumps its contents onto the cutting board. The way she pushes the knife into the tomatoes is oddly reflective of her personality—cautious, but trusting.

“Amanda is a people-pleaser,” Bryan says. “She’ll do anything to try and keep everyone happy. I tell her she should stand up for herself more, and--”

“I’m getting better,” she interposes from the kitchen. The statement itself evidence of its own truth.

I laugh at the way Zuzu—named after a character in It’s a Wonderful Life—stands on his hind legs to be closer to Amanda.

We talk about the theory that we all communicate love to our spouses using--primarily--one of the five love languages. Bryan, like me, needs physical touch. Amanda needs quality time. Bryan says a lackadaisical approach to that time won’t do any good—“It has to be quality time,” he says. Amanda nods to reiterate the emphasis on quality.

“Dinner is ready,” she says, inviting me to help myself.

Amanda moving around the kitchen kept the dogs scurrying about the apartment, but when we all sit at the table to eat, they lie down. The way dogs sometimes look like they just fell over, mid-stride, almost too cute to bear. I stretch my arm out from the table and hold my phone over Zuzu to take a picture.

After dinner, Bryan and I split the one milk stout in the fridge, Amanda pulls brownies from the oven, and the three of us allow ourselves to drift into a conversation about Making a Murderer and the terrifying reality of the wrongly accused, which leads to conversation about politics and war and ultimately to that moment when we all remember how scary the world can be sometimes. But then we remember how we share this planet with dogs. Bryan picks up Tebow and Zuzu stares at him with his tongue out and somehow this makes all the terrible things we’ve been talking about suddenly seem like no big deal. At least for the moment.

On my way to the door, I take note of the pictures they’ve got on the wall. In their wedding photos Bryan has no facial hair, which makes him look so much younger than he does tonight. They’ve also hung some of Amanda’s art on the wall; two pieces—one a glittered up piece in the shape of Arkansas, another in the shape of Minnesota, Bryan’s home state.

No matter where they each came from, now they both live here, in this apartment in Conway, on the back side of the building facing a small open field and then some woods. There’s a doormat and a door hanger with an ‘A’ on them.

No matter where you are, if you want to invite me and Liz to dinner, we’d love to come. In return, we’ll do our best to be good conversationalists and I’ll document a small piece of your everyday life. We’re fun dinner guests, people. Kids are sometimes skeptical of me, but they love Liz. I’ll give your pets a lot of attention, though. I’m good at that. If you want to invite your weird uncle over for dinner, too, so he’ll stop bugging you, now’s the time! I’ll talk to him so you don’t have to.

We live in Little Rock, Arkansas, but we’re soon moving to Morristown, Arizona, and potentially doing some traveling next summer, so I’ll keep a list and when we’re traveling in your area, we’d love to meet you and your family/roommates/cat and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Email me at gchoate17 (at) outlook [dot] com with the subject line: Dinner at Our House.

[dinneratourhouse]

Dinner at the Webber House: August 14, 2015

The Webber House: Sarah, Frank, Barley the Dog.

Location: Little Rock, Arkansas.

Menu: Nibble: Charcuterie and Champagne Appetizer: Bacon-wrapped Dates and Prosciutto and Basil-wrapped Melon - White Wine to Drink Soup: Gazpacho (Recipe below.) Salad: Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Vinaigrette - White Wine to Drink Main: Coq au Vin with Mashed Potatoes and Bacon-braised Brussels Sprouts -Pinot Noir to Drink Dessert: Lemon and Blueberry Layer Cake - Espresso or Cortado to Drink Nightcap: Raspberry and Lemon Macarons and Tawny Port

Liz and I park on the street in front of the house. There is a sculpture in the front yard of an oversized rooster. I see Sarah glance at us through the window. “They’re here,” I imagine her saying to Frank, her husband.

Sarah sent us a working copy of the menu a week ago, then the finalized menu a couple of hours before we were set to arrive. If only I could be so organized. Sarah thrives on it. We worked together until she got sick with an autoimmune disorder last year and had to quit because she could hardly get out of bed. At work she was just as organized, putting together lengthy proposals, neatly filing away the necessary information on each page. I imagine she combatted her health issues in the same way, thoroughly and with an organized plan. She tells me later her diet makes all the difference—turns out she’s got Celiac Disease and can’t eat gluten. Her planned menu for us is a smorgasbord that sets out to prove how delicious a gluten-free meal can be.

Inside, the dining room table is already set with white china, a formal amount of silverware, a plethora of glasses for each of our beverage pairings. In the kitchen we meet Frank, with his dark beard and enviously small amount of body fat, which he’s earned from many hours on the bike. He used to be rated as a professional cyclist, he tells us.

Sarah offers us drinks, and Frank seems to know it’s his responsibility to make them. He pulls three tumblers from the kitchen cabinets and pours a dram of Dickel over ice into each one. When he hands me my whiskey, I see on the side is a green, painted bicycle. Cycling permeates the air in their house—its how they met; he worked at a cycling shop and she came in to get her bike worked on.

“Should we go into the other room?” Sarah asks. I assume she means where the table has been set, but when we get there, she guides me into their den, where she has prepared charcuterie to eat with our drinks. There are cheeses soft and hard, creamy and dry—all delicious. There is salami and prosciutto, pickles, olives, and she has roasted garlic cloves.

Just as the four of us take a seat, there is a knock at the front door. Sarah has invited their friends Trevor and his fiancé—also named Liz—to join us for dinner.  They come bearing beer and wine and a card game called Superfight, made by the same company responsible for the ever-popular Cards Against Humanity. Frank pours a few glasses of champagne while Liz and I fork charcuterie onto our plates and Sarah goes back to the stove.

At the table, Sarah serves us appetizers of bacon-wrapped dates, immediately followed by prosciutto and basil-wrapped watermelon and cantaloupe. I’ve never had anything like the meat-wrapped melon and it’s everything I can do to not eat the entire platter. She serves us each a bowl of Spanish gazpacho—cold and spicy, refreshing and delicious. I ate too much melon, I can feel it. I’m full and the salad hasn’t made it to the table yet. I wonder how everyone else at the table is doing, if they’ve eaten too much as well.

Over the salad there is a warm bacon vinaigrette and conversation about how each of the couples at the table met. Liz and Trevor met as strangers on a cruise, and they’ll soon be married on one. My Liz and I met as coworkers, and then we developed mutual affections for each other (I was completely enamored with her) until holding it in became too much to take and we had to tell each other how we felt (I told her how I felt) over Vietnamese food one day (she was startled/pissed) and we were thrilled we could finally move forward with our new lives together out in the open just as we’d always imagined (it took her a while to come around to the idea, but she finally did and I’m a real catch and she’s never going to leave me). Sarah and Frank were roommates for a year before they started dating. Even after they were dating, they kept their separate rooms.

“After dates would you walk her to her bedroom door?” I ask Frank.

“Pretty much.”

Hints of that roommate mentality still show in their interactions. There’s a roommate kind of mutual respect that clearly exists in the space between them. But there is also the support that comes from being more than roommates. It shows in the way Frank holds the dish so Sarah can put the Brussels sprouts in it. It shows in their smiles.

“This is the same coq au vin we had at our wedding,” Sarah says.

There’s a mountain of it on mashed potatoes on my plate. I was full two courses ago and am reaching a point of serious gluttony, but I think about tomorrow, when I’ll be hungry again and I know I’ll regret not eating everything on my plate now, and so I do. And then the lemon and blueberry layer cake shows up. When Sarah puts a piece in front of Liz, I think of asking for a small piece—a piece the size of which would cause my grandfather to refer to it as the son-in-law’s piece—but then Liz says something along the lines of “Good gawd. It’s so good.”

Frank offers espresso, everyone accepts. It goes perfectly with the cake. I have no idea where all this food is going, but I keep ingesting it. By the time we retire back to the den to play Superfight, I’m going into a food coma. I can feel my brain shutting down. We drink port wine and Sarah puts raspberry and lemon macarons in front of us and we eat and we eat and we eat and I’d be forced to fall asleep there on the couch, but either Frank or Sarah has let Barley the labradoodle out of his cage and he is now standing on my chest and licking my face briefly before honing in on Liz’s.

“Barley!” Sarah says, but Liz and I like it. We encourage him by petting his curly black coat and scratching under his chin.

“You have to take me home,” I tell Liz after a few more minutes. There’s still a plateful of uneaten macarons, but I convince myself I’ve done my share tonight. I’m so fat and happy. Frank assures me Barley can eat the macarons. Sarah assures me Barley will not be eating the macarons. Frank again assures me Barley will get a macaron. They bicker like a couple of roommates, who are in love.

Spanish Gazpacho Recipe, as emailed from Sarah:

4 large heirloom tomatoes

1 large cucumber, peeled and deseeded

4 cloves garlic

1 red bell pepper

1 green bell pepper

1 small red onion

1 jalapeno deseeded

1 4-inch section of baguette - cubed

1 Avocado

Process tomatoes, cucumber, garlic, red bell pepper, green bell pepper, onion, jalapeno and baguette together with a pinch of salt and fresh cracked pepper in food processor until very smooth (about 3-5 minutes). Depending on the size of your processor, you may have to divide the ingredients in half and work in batches. Refrigerate 8-10 hours. Garnish with avocado and crostini while plating.  Makes 6-8 servings.

No matter where you are, if you want to invite me and Liz to dinner, we’d love to come. In return, we’ll do our best to be good conversationalists and I’ll document a small piece of your everyday life. We’re fun dinner guests, people. Kids are sometimes skeptical of me, but they love Liz. I’ll give your pets a lot of attention, though. I’m good at that. If you want to invite your weird uncle over for dinner, too, so he’ll stop bugging you, now’s the time! I’ll talk to him so you don’t have to.

We live in Little Rock, Arkansas, but I’ll keep a list and when we’re traveling in your area, we’d love to meet you and your family/roommates/cat and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Email me at gchoate17 (at) outlook [dot] com with the subject line: Dinner at Our House.

[dinneratourhouse]

Dinner at the Quessenberry House: July 10, 2015

The Quessenberry House: Michael (and a roommate who was in Miami).

Menu: Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms with Grilled Peppers and Salad. (Recipe below.)

Location: Jonesboro, Arkansas.

Liz and I walk in the front door and follow Michael up the stairs to the living area of his apartment. His roommate is in Miami, Michael says, but Lee and Krystal are going to join us for dinner, and so is Seth. He gives us a brief tour of the two-bedroom, one-bath he’s called home for less than a year. While Michael pulls things from the refrigerator, I study a painting on the wall. It’s of Muhammad Ali standing over a fallen contender in the ring. The painting is autographed not by the artist, but by Ali himself. It’s addressed to Michael’s dad, Jim, who passed away 15 years ago and was a bit of a legend himself. Jim Quessenberry was a world champion barbecue chef. Michael and his brother Lee still make and sell Jim’s famous sauce, which is thin enough—and delicious enough—that I sometimes drink it from the bottle. I recommend you pick some up by clicking here.

“These mushrooms have been marinating for a while in this tomato dressing,” Michael says as he places them on the counter in front of us. Michael works at a company doing software development, but the smile on his face as he cuts peppers at the sink makes me question why he should ever be doing anything other than cooking food for people. It’s this that he loves.

When Michael’s friend Seth shows up, they immediately spar with each other with their subtle humor. They reference things in the kitchen and recall previous experiences of cooking food together in a way that’s hard for me to keep up with as an outsider. Seth ribs Michael about missing the gym today. They’re each other’s accountability partners, and apparently they’re good ones as Michael tells me he’s lost over 50 pounds.

Michael pulls out the chicken and sprinkles it with his own seasoning. He lines a perforated pizza pan with aluminum foil and we all watch as he uses a knife to poke holes in the aluminum.

“Hurry, up, Michael,” Seth says affectionately as a way to fill the silence.

When Michael’s finished, we all go downstairs to the garage where Michael pulls the Weber grill a few feet into the driveway. He soaks a paper towel in vegetable oil and lights it on fire before placing it under the coals. He tells me he stopped using lighter fluid a while back because it hurts the taste of whatever you put on the grill, and for other reasons, too, but with Michael, you get the impression that nothing is as important as the taste.

Lee and Krystal pull into the driveway and pull up a couple of fold-out camping chairs.

When the mushrooms are cooked and the chicken reaches the proper temperature and the veggies have lost some of their crispness, we all single-file upstairs. Krystal pulls a salad she brought from the refrigerator to add to the mix. Seth and Michael stack pieces of chicken on top of the portobellos, then places a slice of provolone cheese on top of it. They plate the veggies and salad for each of us as well. I’m salivating by the time I get my plate and take it to the sofa in the den where I put the plate in my lap. Before I can take my first bite Liz is blinking slowly as she chews—her way of telling me that the mushrooms are going to exceed my expectations. I try a bite. She’s right.

Not long after dinner, Lee suggests Michael and Seth play some Tenacious D. Michael disappears into the bedroom and returns in a few moments carrying two acoustic guitars.

“It must be that time in the evening already,” Michael tells me, making note that he hasn’t been drinking much lately, and his tolerance is low enough that the few beers he’s had are enough to make him agree to play.

He and Seth strum—cautiously at first—while they get back into their rhythm as a duo. We all laugh as they hit the important lyrics of each song.

“I miss doing this so much,” Krystal says.

Lee starts hemming and hawing and making a move to get out of his chair.

“Lee wants to go downtown to the coffee shop to see his hippie friends,” Krystal says.

“You got some hippie friends, Lee?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “I like ‘em.”

It’s clear Krystal wants to stay. Lee invites everyone to come to the coffee shop, and Liz and I say we wouldn’t mind going downtown, but I’m also getting comfortable on the couch. Michael and Seth agree to go downtown, too, but when Lee makes a deliberate move to get up, no one follows. Instead, Seth launches into a story about the time their friend did that one thing that one time. Michael immediately picks it up. Krystal, Liz, and I all encourage them with our laughter, and so Lee sits down again and laughs too. Hours go by and the laughing doesn’t stop.

We talk about whether or not Lee has a deviated septum, he blows the smoke from his e-cigarette through his nostrils, causing him to look like a snorting cartoon bull.

“See how it comes out more on one side than the other?” he asks. “Deviated septum.”

I’m amazed at the smoke. Lee can tell. He tells me he can make a tornado with it if I come with him to the kitchen counter. He blows the smoke through the cardboard tube from the roll of paper towels and lifts his finger quickly from the smoke hovering over the counter. Sure enough, he makes a tornado.

“I haven’t laughed this much in a long time,” Lee confides in me.

When I get back to the couch, I lie down and Liz cozies up beside me. We’re usually in bed before 10pm, but we’ve lost track of time. I don’t even know what time it is. The lights are still bright and everyone is still in the room, but we’re both drifting off with our eyes closed, I can tell. The only thing keeping us awake is the rhythm of the voices in the room—Seth’s and Michael’s, Lee’s and Krystal’s. We can barely keep up with the conversation, but the cadence of those eastern Arkansas accents keeps us laughing.

“I don’t remember the last time I laughed this hard,” Liz whispers to me.

“Lee just told me the same thing,” I say.

“My abs can’t take it anymore,” she says, just before we fall fast asleep for the night on Michael’s couch.

Smoked Stuffed Portobello Recipe, as emailed by Michael:

This recipe is my version of a recipe that my friend Lisa Godsey shared with me. Lisa and I met when we cooked in the Jonesboro BBQ contest right next to each other, and became good friends because we are both foodies. I didn’t even like mushrooms before I discovered this recipe.

You need: 1 large portobello per guest

1 medium boneless chicken breast per guest (I cut a large one in ½ for two guests)

1 medium onion (I prefer vidalia)

2 medium slices provolone cheese

1 (or more) pints Kraft - Sun Dried Tomato Dressing (You can find this at Walmart)

Prepare your portobellos by washing them, trimming the edges for uniformity, twisting the stems off, and deribbing with a spoon. Marinate the mushrooms in the dressing for at least 6 hours (the longer the better, try overnight). You can also cut your onions up into slivers or rings at this time to save you some time… place them in the fridge for later

You can marinate or brine the chicken breasts if you like. I did not. I just shook some Jim Quessenberry’s Rub Beautiful on them and stuck them in the fridge until I was ready to cook.

My go to for a side for grilled chicken is usually red, orange, and yellow bell peppers, with a little vidalia onions in the mix, grilled. (I’ll leave the sides up to you for this recipe)

Prep a hot fire on one side of your grill (I prefer Weber) leaving the other side with no coals under it. Grill chicken breasts 3-4 mins per side on the hot side of the grill to get some nice grill marks on them. Move them to the cooler side to slow-smoke until done. Use a digital thermometer to check internal temp of chicken. You want the temp to be up to 165 F.

Grill the portobello the same way, it shouldn’t take very long to cook, and doesn’t have to cook up to 165 F. Just get some grill marks on it and keep it on until it is a slightly wilted but not burnt or dry.

Saute the onions in a skillet with a little olive oil or butter on the stove top. Take a portobello place it down on the cool side of the grill first, place chicken on top, place sauteed onions on chicken, and cover the entire stack with provolone. Close the lid of the grill long enough to melt the cheese. Serve onto each plate with preferred side.

No matter where you are, if you want to invite me and Liz to dinner, we’d love to come. In return, we’ll do our best to be good conversationalists and I’ll document a small piece of your everyday life. We’re fun dinner guests, people. Kids are sometimes skeptical of me, but they love Liz. I’ll give your pets a lot of attention, though. I’m good at that. If you want to invite your weird uncle over for dinner, too, so he’ll stop bugging you, now’s the time! I’ll talk to him so you don’t have to.

We live in Little Rock, Arkansas, but I’ll keep a list and when we’re traveling in your area, we’d love to meet you and your family/roommates/cat and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Email me at gchoate17 (at) outlook [dot] com with the subject line: Dinner at Our House.

[dinneratourhouse]

Dinner at the Boudra House: June 12, 2015

The Boudra House: Jessica, Jack, Declan, Olivia, and Alaina.

Menu: Shish Kebabs, Salad, Jalapeno-stuffed Olives, and Pico de Gallo.

Location: Russellville, Arkansas.

When Liz and I pull up to the house, Jessica is sitting on the porch swing, keeping watch over Olivia and Alaina who are buzzing frantically about the swing set in the yard like bees in a flower garden. In the house, the buzz of children is more concentrated, like bees in the hive, and six-year-old Declan joins the buzz. He doesn’t appear as excited as the girls are about having dinner guests, but maybe he’s just utilizing his practiced stoicism in the way an oldest sibling sometimes does. After a few seconds, he makes his way to the laptop to continue his game of Minecraft. Meanwhile, the girls are more and more intrigued by Liz’s presence.

While we were stuck in traffic, Jessica and Jack prepared shish kebabs that are now waiting to go into the oven. Jessica puts jalapeno-stuffed olives in a bowl as an appetizer. She puts cherries into a separate bowl for Alaina, who eats them with such vigor she looks like an actor in a vampire movie after only a few seconds. Jessica comes over to her with a wet paper towel and Alaina instinctively closes her eyes so her mother can wipe her face.

I join Jack in the front yard where he’s playing his guitar. He’s got blues riffs marked on the frets—he’s trying to teach himself. Before he can demonstrate any music he’s conquered, Alaina shows up and has demanded his attention.

When Liz and Jessica join us outside, our conversation shifts to things only grown-ups talk about and I can see the annoyance on Alaina’s face. As Jack tells me about the impassable row of shrubs he used to have on the edge of the property, Alaina finds bubbles to try and get our attention. Jessica tells us about the vacation they just took to Branson. Alaina runs to the swing set, yelling the entire time in an attempt to get our attention again. She sings at the top of her lungs on the swing, but still the grown-ups talk without interruption.

Jessica goes inside to check on dinner and the other two kids who are battling each other in some sort of dancing game for the Nintendo Wii. Liz goes with her. Alaina sees her chance. She runs and jumps on my lap, facing me.

“Go, horsie!”

I make the best horse noise I know—“BHRBHMBHMBR!”

“Hurry, horsie! I have the nice princess on the back!”

“If the nice princess is on the back, then who are you?”

“I’m the mean princess,” she says matter of factly.

I ask her if she doesn’t want to be the nice princess. She assures me she doesn’t. Jack confirms it.

“She’s the cute one,” he says. “Olivia’s the sweet one. Declan’s the smart one.”

It seems like Alaina likes being the cute one. Every time I look at her when I’m holding my camera, she poses in her purple tutu and pink rain boots. She tells me to take another one. She tells me to wait until she climbs on top of the porch post, then she strikes a pose like a model on the cover of a pocket-sized edition of Vogue, published for three-year-olds.

We all sit around the big wooden table in the dining room, passing the salad bowl around the table. I dish some out for Olivia and Alaina, who is at my right hip. We eat from the wooden skewers stocked with steak, mushrooms, peppers, zucchini, and onions. We talk about how they got their table off the side of the road. They get lots of things off the side of the road. It’s a favorite past time.

“It’s like a game,” Jessica says, “to make something out of what someone else has thrown away.”

Alaina needs attention. She takes my camera and snaps a photo of a kebab.

With three kids running around, time to ask about Jessica and Jack’s relationship is scarce, but I finally find time to ask how they got together. Jessica tells us about how Jack somehow or another had this picture of her before they met. How he held onto it. How he created this idea in his mind of who she was. She half-jokingly says that once he actually got to know her, she’s sure there’s no way she lived up to the fantasy he’d created in his mind.

“I’m lucky,” Jack says sheepishly. Like he’s not real keen on talking about this kind of stuff, but there’s no doubt pride in his voice when he says, “I’m just an old country boy who somehow got a beautiful girlfriend.”

And there is pride when Jessica shows me the guitar Jack used as a canvas to recreate that picture of her he carried around. It hangs in their bedroom. The picture sits next to the bed.

Back at the table, the kids have trapped Liz and are using her phone to watch videos from Disney’s Frozen.

“Elsa!” the girls scream over each other. Declan scowls at having to watch “Let It Go” again, but still, he doesn’t walk away.

When Liz gets up to leave, Alaina grabs her phone. Liz picks her up, but Alaina hangs on to the phone.

“Elsa,” she whispers to herself.

“UH-LANE-UH,” Jessica says emphatically. When she pronounces Alaina’s name like that, it’s clear Jessica means business. Usually she refers to her daughter as ‘Laina. “Give Liz her phone back so they can go home.”

Jessica pulls the phone gently from her little hands and tears well up in Alaina’s eyes. It’s terribly heartbreaking and cute.

But, again, she is the cute one.

Shish Kebab Recipe, as sent via email from Jessica:

I like to marinate the steak in oil, salt, pepper and Garlic powder before cooking. After that, just add yummy veggies, any that you like. If I remember I put a little salt on them. Always soak the skewers in water for 30 minutes before piecing them together.

No matter where you are, if you want to invite me and Liz to dinner, we’d love to come. In return, we’ll do our best to be good conversationalists and I’ll document a small piece of your everyday life. We’re fun dinner guests, people. Kids are sometimes skeptical of me, but they love Liz. I’ll give your pets a lot of attention, though. I’m good at that. If you want to invite your weird uncle over for dinner, too, so he’ll stop bugging you, now’s the time! I’ll talk to him so you don’t have to.

We live in Little Rock, Arkansas, but I’ll keep a list and when we’re traveling in your area, we’d love to meet you and your family/roommates/cat and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Email me at gchoate17 (at) outlook [dot] com with the subject line: Dinner at Our House.

[dinneratourhouse]

Dinner at the Moore-McKown House: January 21, 2015

The Moore-McKown House: Jamie (and Jacob) and Spencer (and Casey).

Menu: Meatloaf, Green Beans, Macaroni and Cheese, and Potatoes.

Location: North Little Rock, Arkansas.

As Liz and I walk through the open garage door, we can see through the glass pane, Jamie sitting on a stool at the kitchen bar. When she sees us, a smile creeps across her face and we exchange waves.

Spencer is pulling something from the microwave. Jacob sits on the couch in the living room, keeping an eye on the television and his hands on the laptop in his lap. After Liz and I walk in, Jacob puts the laptop aside and takes a seat beside Jamie.

"It's kind of her thing," they told me. "It's really good."

We've had the dinner planned for a couple of weeks, and now there's the meatloaf, sitting on the countertop in a cast-iron skillet. It's been labeled the "blog meal" on the calendar they keep on the wall.

Jamie and Spencer are roommates, but their boyfriends are around enough that they're listed on the house dry-erase calendar and have cooking responsibilities. Most days have a dish listed--pork tenderloin, spicy shrimp pasta, chicken parm--and each one is written in either blue or purple marker. Spencer and Casey are responsible for the purple dishes, while Jamie and Jacob are responsible for the blue dishes.

Jacob pulls a fancy wine opener from the drawer to open a bottle of Chardonnay. And when I say fancy, I mean it looks like a small piece of construction equipment and I don't know how to use it, but Jacob operates it with ease. (He can probably also operate construction equipment.)

Spencer announces that dinner is ready, which prompts Casey to come in from the other end of the house. He grabs a plate and serves himself at the stove top. Meatloaf, green beans, macaroni bow-tie pasta and cheese, and potatoes, sliced and buttered. With his plate full, he walks into the next room and sits at the ping pong table.

"I'm so embarrassed we don't have a better place to sit," Jamie says. But somehow the ping pong table is perfect. Made more so when someone placed the chilled bottle of wine on the ping pong paddle, like a giant, handled coaster.

The meatloaf is good as is evidenced by my inability to sit still knowing there's more waiting for me in the kitchen. Liz and I both go back for seconds.

We all talk about how Jacob and Casey have known each other for most of their lives. They're friendship is what brought Jamie and Spencer under the same roof to be roommates.

When we finish the bottle of wine, Casey excuses himself to go meet his friends for trivia. The rest of us decide to open another bottle.

As the night winds down, Jacob makes his way to the kitchen to start cleaning up. From the little bit of food we left behind, some of it gets scraped into the trash can, but a few bits of meatloaf are going to Wingo, Jamie's dog, a tiny little Maltese. She holds the small pieces of meat in the air over Wingo's head and he stands up on his hind two legs like he belongs in the circus. With his front two legs, he bats them in unison. It's an impressive show of balance. When Jamie gives him the meat, he goes back down to all fours, happy. And the show is over.

Meatloaf Recipe:

Preheat oven to 375.

2 eggs

1 chopped bell pepper

1/2 chopped onion

2 pieces of bread crumbled

1 can of condensed milk

Meatloaf seasoning packet

2 Lbs ground beef

Mix everything together in large bowl. Pour ingredients into a cast iron skillet and press the meat to mold to the pan. Bake for 30 minutes and take out of oven and cut into pieces and then continue cooking for another 35-40 minutes.

No matter where you are, if you want to invite me and Liz to dinner, we’d love to come. In return, we’ll do our best to be good conversationalists and I’ll document a small piece of your everyday life. We’re fun dinner guests, people. Kids are sometimes skeptical of me, but they love Liz. I’ll give your pets a lot of attention, though. I’m good at that. If you want to invite your weird uncle over for dinner, too, so he’ll stop bugging you, now’s the time! I’ll talk to him so you don’t have to.

We live in Little Rock, Arkansas, but I’ll keep a list and when we’re traveling in your area, we’d love to meet you and your family/roommates/cat and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Email me at gchoate17 (at) outlook [dot] com with the subject line: Dinner at Our House.

[dinneratourhouse]

Dinner at the Ferguson House: January 16, 2015

The Ferguson House: Mary Catherine and Peepaw.

Menu: Beef Roast, Mixed Vegetables, Salad, Cornbread. Cornbread recipe below.

Location: Boxley Valley, Arkansas.

When Liz and I walk into the farmhouse, which features a functioning antique cast-iron cooking stove, we find Mary Catherine on a stool in the kitchen, peeling and slicing apples. It's for the pie we're going to have after dinner, she says. She's got her iPad set up on the counter next to her--Netflixing--but she pauses it when we walk in the house. The afternoon sunlight is coming through the window above the sink. I enjoy watching her cut the apples and I think about what life has been like here on her grandparents' farm since she moved from Virginia last May.

Her fiance, Thomas, moved here with her, but he's been in Austin, Texas since the fall, preparing the way for their next move. He's got MC's dog with him. All of it has left her somewhat lonely, especially since Peepaw has been in Panama birdwatching for a couple of weeks now. She's excited we've come to visit, I can tell by the way she talks to us. Every new conversation she introduces has the thrill of Christmas morning.

"Is it too early to have our afternoon cocktail? Let's go down to the river!" She suggests.

Liz and I agree it's not too early, and we all throw on our coats. MC grabs a bottle of Bulleit bourbon, some ice and three glasses. We walk off the porch and toward the barn to get in the truck. It's full of gloves and tools and a greasy towel--things that belong in a farm truck--and so Liz has to sit in my lap in the passenger's seat. As our diesel engine rumbles across the pasture, Peepaw's cows walk toward us with a sense of urgency in the hope of an extra feeding, but we have nothing for them. Their eyes look at us with equal parts hopefulness and skepticism.

At the creek that bisects the pasture, we get out to see how high it's running. MC doesn't want to flood the truck and she's worried about a tree limb blocking the path on the other side.

"If I fuck up the truck, Nathan will be pissed," she says.

Nathan is the hired hand who's running the farm while Peepaw is away. MC likes Nathan and his 26-year-old farmboy know-how and wants our friend who lives in San Francisco to date him. Nevermind that San Francisco feels a world away from this place where there is no cell phone reception and the fact that Nathan has a girlfriend. Somehow when MC suggests the idea, it doesn't sound absurd. What does sound absurd is MC taking her shoes and socks off, wading through the freezing water and dragging the limb out of our way, but she does it without hesitation. I drive the truck across and we continue through the pasture until we get to the river, the cows still inching in around us.

Sitting on the banks of the Buffalo River, we look across the blue-green water to the bluff on the opposite side. The cows are still mooing behind us, but they eventually taper off, convinced we aren't going to feed them after all. Icicles hang down from the bluffs. The water is still. MC pulls out the cups and the ice and the bottle of bourbon.

"This should be a commercial for Bulleit," she says. And she's right. We are living in a moment that feels too good to be real.

MC says she wants to get married in this spot, but acknowledges it would be hard for Thomas's family to come all this way from Richmond, Virginia. And where would they stay? In the pasture? Thomas has a proud Irish heritage and I suggest a bagpiper play from atop the bluff, or maybe from a canoe in the water.

We get back to the house as the sun finishes its descent for the day. The house has successfully contained the aroma from the crockpot full of beef and vegetables. MC finishes preparing the apple pie and sticks it in the oven, and we all make our way to the front porch to look at the stars, which show up brightly in this place. The Big Dipper. Orion's belt.

When Liz gets cold, MC and I stay on the porch and take the opportunity to talk like the old friends we are. Like we've been since we were folding sweaters together at Banana Republic 14 years ago at the mall. And when we're caught up, we go inside so MC can pour the batter into a pan that will yield cornbread in the shape of individual ears of corn. She makes the batter using a recipe written in pen on crinkled paper. At the top, it says, "Grandma's Loveless Cornbread," but the way the recipe is held beside the stove by a worn clothes pin, it's clear the cornbread has always been made with plenty of love.

While the cornbread is baking, MC halves cherry tomatoes to put into the salad and she brings it to the table where Liz and I are still sipping at our bourbons. When the roast makes it to the table, MC pulls the cornbread from the oven and tells us to start eating.

Our plates are patterned with blood-red country scenes from the past, but somehow, in this place, the scenes almost feel contemporary as we eat at this sturdy wooden table.

After dinner, MC cuts the pie and shaves some vanilla ice cream into each of our bowls.

"We're apparently out of nutmeg, so I hope it tastes okay," she says.

When I've eaten my bowlful, I fight the urge to run my tongue along the bottom of the bowl, where specks of cinnamon float atop the melted ice cream.

Grandma's Loveless Cornbread

3/4 cup corn meal

1/2 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

Mix dry ingredients together. Add 3 tablespoons cooking oil, 1 egg, 1 cup buttermilk. Stir together in separate bowl, fold into corn meal mixture. Pour into slightly oiled skillet. Cook in 450-degree oven for 25 minutes.

No matter where you are, if you want to invite me and Liz to dinner, we’d love to come. In return, we’ll do our best to be good conversationalists and I'll document a small piece of your everyday life. We're fun dinner guests, people. Kids are sometimes skeptical of me, but they love Liz. I’ll give your pets a lot of attention, though. I'm good at that. If you want to invite your weird uncle over for dinner, too, so he’ll stop bugging you, now’s the time! I’ll talk to him so you don’t have to.

We live in Little Rock, Arkansas, but I’ll keep a list and when we're traveling in your area, we’d love to meet you and your family/roommates/cat and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Email me at gchoate17 (at) outlook [dot] com with the subject line: Dinner at Our House.

[dinneratourhouse]

Dinner at the Murphy House: December 8, 2014

The Murphy House: Ben, Sherie, Maddie, Pressly, Kate, Bella the Cat, and Spike the Fish.

Menu: Grilled Chicken and Bacon Mac’n’Cheese, Salad, and Texas Toast. Recipe here.

Location: Frisco, Texas

This is my first dinner to bring someone with me. Liz and I are in town for work, so I invited her to come along with me. When Sherie opens the door, Pressly and Kate immediately latch onto Liz. I haven’t seen Maddie since she was a little girl and she doesn’t remember me. Up against her younger sisters and the memory I have of her, she seems like a lady now, despite being only 10 years old. She quietly stands with a smile on her face over the pan in which her mother is melting white cheddar cheese to mix into the macaroni for dinner.

Meanwhile, the younger girls insist upon Liz’s attention in the bedroom. They are showing her things. Lots of things. Things they want to be sure Liz knows belongs to them separately. They share the bedroom, but nothing else, it seems.

“This is my crayon,” Kate says.

“This is my book,” Pressly says.

It’s a race to show us all of their belongings. Maddie sits on the bed and watches with respectful boredom as Pressly and Kate begin showing us their respective collections of panties.

Sherie and I used to work together, but it’s been around five years since I last saw her. We talk about where we’ve been and where our coworkers have been in the time since we worked together. We both lived in Louisiana at the same time, but we never got together. It’s weird how that happens. And by weird, I mean normal. People don’t get together unless they have a pretty good reason, even if they say they want to get together. I’m thankful this blog has brought us together again. I enjoy seeing Sherie and how her family has grown.

I never really spent much time with Sherie’s husband who worked with us too, but I did see him from time to time. My coworkers and I thought he might be a hitman. He had the stoic, mysterious look belonging to someone who could probably kill someone without much thought or effort. When he walks through the door after work tonight, though, he has three girls running excitedly toward him. They take turns jumping into his arms. When he picks up Pressly, her elbow accidentally lands on his nose. He takes it in stride, only pausing to stretch out his face to make sure it’s not bleeding. All in a day’s work of having three little girls who think he is the greatest man walking the planet.

When the excitement of Ben coming home wears off, the girls drag Liz back to their bedroom, and Sherie begins making the girls’ plates. The youngest girls eat on cafeteria-style plates, the ones with the dividers. She puts the macaroni and cheese in the biggest part, and she adds salad to another. For Kate’s salad, she walks to the refrigerator and gets more cherry tomatoes. She empties the container onto her plate.

“Kate loves tomatoes,” Sherie says.

“Yeah, if you want the tomatoes on your plate, you better eat them first because she’ll come eat yours, too,” Ben says.

On my way to tell the girls dinner is ready, I come around the corner to find Bella sitting on the edge of the table. When the girls come running by, it seems no coincidence the cat has learn to stay elevated for safety's sake. She watches calmly as the chaos runs by her toward the kitchen.

The girls eat their dinner at a small table in the breakfast nook adjacent to the kitchen. Liz and I sit at the bar next to Spike’s fish bowl, which is covered with a piece of sheer cloth held on by a rubber band because Bella likes to drink Spike’s water. Sherie chooses to eat standing up in the kitchen while Ben takes a seat in the den, but stays involved in our conversation as it jumps from work talk to parenting talk to talking about the importance of community, no matter where you choose to live.

When the girls are finished eating, they disappear into the bedroom, even though they know there’s banana pudding for dessert.

“We don’t let them get dessert until everyone has finished dinner and the kitchen is clean,” Sherie says. It’s impressive the girls don’t beg—they don’t even mention it. Sherie washes dishes and puts the leftovers into the fridge.

“Who wants banana pudding?” she calls out toward the hallway.

The girls come running, and she dishes each of them out a bowl.

When she hands me my bowl, I think there's too much banana pudding in it for me alone, but it's not long until I'm scraping the last lines of pudding from the bottom of the bowl.

When everyone's pudding is gone, Sherie starts dropping hints to the girls about bath time. Liz and I gather our things. Pressly follows Liz to the front door and we say our goodbyes. Sherie and I agree to make plans to not wait so many years before seeing each other again, and who knows if we'll hold each other to it, but I like to think we will.

"That was a blast," Liz says when the door closes behind us.

No matter where you are, if you want to invite me to dinner, I’d love to come. In return, I’ll do my best to be a good conversationalist and document a small piece of your everyday life. I’m a fun dinner guest, people. Kids love me. I’ll give your pets a lot of attention. If you want to invite your weird uncle over for dinner, too, so he’ll stop bugging you, now’s the time! I’ll talk to him so you don’t have to.

I live in Little Rock, Arkansas, but I’ll keep a list and when I’m traveling in your area, I’d love to meet you and your family/roommates/cat and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Email me at gchoate17 (at) outlook [dot] com with the subject line: Dinner at Our House.

[dinneratourhouse]

Dinner at the Pinney-Choate House: December 2, 2014

The Pinney-Choate House: John, Tessa, and Evie the Dog.

Menu: Pasta Primavera, Bruschetta. Recipe for bruschetta below.

Location: Sherwood, Arkansas

When I walk in the front door, I find John and Tess in the kitchen. They’re nearly finished cooking. John’s been on a culinary kick lately and tonight he’s making pasta primavera with squash and broccoli. Tess dices tomatoes for the bruschetta. John pours wine, and the three of us discuss our respective days. Evie, the golden retriever, waits impatiently as John stirs the vegetables into the pasta and Tess pulls the toasted bread from the oven.

Evie bounces back and forth from John’s feet to Tess’s, hoping one of them will drop something. She eventually scores when a piece of toasted bread slides off the pan and into the floor. Evie eats it quickly, then looks up in the hopes of another. It isn’t long until she gets lucky again.

When the food is ready, we sit at the table, which is decorated for Christmas. I set my wine glass down next to a small Christmas tree.

While we eat, we discuss John’s being accepted to optometry school. They’re likely going to move to Tahlequah, Oklahoma soon. They’re excited about it. It’s a small city, but it has some things going on, they say. It’s close to Tulsa. It’s close to Fayetteville. It’s not too far from here, where Tess will be driving back and forth a couple of times a week in order to hang on to her job where she works in her dad’s dental office. She likes teeth. She keeps an eye on John’s and when he has something in them, she goes after it for him.

After dinner, John pours us a couple of bourbons--Basil Hayden's--and we migrate to the living room where Tess is decorating their Christmas tree. The whole house is already covered with Christmas—the candle burning is called “Twisted Peppermint,” the soap in the bathroom is “Vanilla Snow Flake,” Evie paces the house with a balled ornament in her mouth. There’s a ceramic nativity scene under a lamp, an oversized advent calendar on the back door. An elf guards the cookie jar. The place mats on the table are festive. There’s a smaller Christmas tree across the room from the large one. A cadre of Santas stand on the mantle. At no point do I ever feel more than an arm’s length away from a spool of ribbon.

I’m excited about seeing Amasa Hines, one of my favorite bands, tomorrow night. I’m playing John and Tess some of their songs to convince them to come to the show with me. They eventually agree to come, and I can tell they’re excited about the idea, but there’s something in the air that makes me think we all know they’re going to back out in the morning. John and Tess and Evie have made their lives here. Whatever satisfaction I get from going to shows, they get something similar from decorating their house, from cooking, from sharing this space together and talking about what the future will bring.

Bruschetta Recipe:

6 small ripe but firm tomatoes, halved, seeded and finely diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

8 fresh basil leaves, chiffonade

balsamic vinegar, 1 tsp

1/4 teaspoon salt

8 (1/2-inch thick) slices Italian country bread

No matter where you are, if you want to invite me to dinner, I’d love to come. In return, I’ll do my best to be a good conversationalist and document a small piece of your everyday life. I’m a fun dinner guest, people. Kids love me. I’ll give your pets a lot of attention. If you want to invite your weird uncle over for dinner, too, so he’ll stop bugging you, now’s the time! I’ll talk to him so you don’t have to.

I live in Little Rock, Arkansas, but I’ll keep a list and when I’m traveling in your area, I’d love to meet you and your family/roommates/cat and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Email me at gchoate17 (at) outlook [dot] com with the subject line: Dinner at Our House.

[dinneratourhouse]

Dinner at the Willbanks House: November 25, 2014

The Willbanks House: Misty, Brad, Beck, Sebastian, Worth, and Maddux the Dog

Menu: Butternut Squash and Black Bean Enchiladas, Rice. Recipe here.

Location: Conway, Arkansas

Misty answers the door and invites me inside. Brad is in the kitchen, getting the boys situated. Worth looks up from his walker, standing no taller than my knees, with his big, curious eyes, and I think how strange it must be to not have a grasp of everything happening around you. Who is this man in our house? There’s no explaining to him that I’m here to eat dinner with him because I’m going to write a blog about it. He’s 10 months old. He doesn’t understand the concept of a blog. Sebastian is three years, and the idea of a man showing up to the house to eat dinner doesn’t seem to bother him. He doesn’t mind getting his picture made while he eats his hot dog and Doritos. He is curious.

When Worth starts to fuss, Brad grabs a bottle and picks him up. Brad doesn’t look like a guy who would be comfortable holding a baby—until he has one. It’s clear that after having three boys, he and Misty anticipate and address needs without even having to speak to one another. Misty follows the older boys upstairs while Brad feeds Worth and watches the Arkansas Razorback basketball game.

“It should be a fun season,” he tells me.

When Misty returns downstairs, she hands me a plate and insists I eat. On the stovetop is a casserole dish of enchiladas with rice.

“What’s the best meal you’ve had so far?” she asks.

I tell her as much as I like ranking things, I can’t bring myself to rank the meals people have invited me to share with them. Anyone willing to open their home up to me doesn’t deserve to be at the bottom of a list.

Worth crawls around the hardwood floors, Brad always just a few feet behind him, while Misty and I catch up, talking about how things have changed since we worked at the same place so long ago. She was nearly 10 months pregnant with Beck when we first me. Or so it seemed. She was miserable in the office back then.

Sebastian comes downstairs wanting attention from his mother, and she gives it to him. Her face lights up when he stands in front of her with his arms up. He tells her he wants the iPad, but Beck has it. Quietly, in a series of looks and sentence fragments, Brad and Misty agree that Beck has earned some iPad time and they can’t take it away from him. They negotiate a compromise with Sebastian.

“Beck loves watching YouTube videos of other people playing video games,” they tell me. They are baffled by it. They say he’ll sit in his room watching people play Minecraft for hours, if they’d let him. We all agree we don’t see the point of watching someone else play a game when he could be playing the game himself. But we all suppose he has his reasons.

Misty calls Beck downstairs—“Show Mr. Guy what you’re watching.”

He’s embarrassed. He leaves the iPad with me and goes to sit on the stairs. I don’t understand the point of the video. Someone has made a Minecraft world that is a replica of Super Mario Bros. Or something. Why watch this when you could be watching funny cat videos? I think back to when I was doing things as a kid and when adults tried to understand my reasoning. I realize I have become old and clueless. It terrifies me.

I wish I could go back to being a seven-year-old, when I understood pretty much anything worth understanding. I wish I could go back to being a three-year-old, when I was still small enough to find comfort by sitting in my mother’s lap.

No matter where you are, if you want to invite me to dinner, I’d love to come. In return, I’ll do my best to be a good conversationalist and document a small piece of your everyday life. I’m a fun dinner guest, people. Kids love me. I’ll give your pets a lot of attention. If you want to invite your weird uncle over for dinner, too, so he’ll stop bugging you, now’s the time! I’ll talk to him so you don’t have to.

I live in Little Rock, Arkansas, but I’ll keep a list and when I’m traveling in your area, I’d love to meet you and your family/roommates/cat and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Email me at gchoate17 (at) outlook [dot] com with the subject line: Dinner at Our House.

[dinneratourhouse]

Dinner at the Cole House: November 23, 2014

The Cole House: Steve, Mitzi, Rachael, Anna, Grace, Neal, Abe the Dog.

Location: Hot Springs, Arkansas

Menu: Roasted Chicken, Sweet Potatoes, Spinach Salad, and Rolls. Recipe below.

I picked my friend Rachael up from the airport after her flight in from where she lives in Denver. In exchange for driving her to Hot Springs, her family invited me to blog about dinner at their house.

The Coles live outside of town and it’s dark when we show up. Rachael walks in the front door of the large house. The floor plan is wide open. A balance beam sits in the middle of the floor. To the right there are a couple of chairs and a couch. In the back is a kitchen.

“Family?” she yells. A large Doberman named Abe runs up to us. Rachael’s mom Mitzi comes in offering a big hug. Then Anna. Then Neal. Everyone is happy to see Rachael, who hasn’t been home since this summer. After a round of hugs, Neal goes back upstairs to do his homework and Mitzi asks Anna to play something on the piano. She plays a couple of songs. Mitzi and Rachael dance to the first one, and we all sing along to the second—John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over).” Something about Rachael coming home after months of being away makes the song feel relevant.

The Coles have lived in this house for a couple of years and they’ve been renovating it since they moved in. They’re doing nearly all of it by themselves. Mitzi asks me if I know anything about grouting tile as she shows me the master bathroom. Living in the house while renovating makes for interesting juxtapositions in places. In the bathroom there is a bottle of moisturizer beside a bottle of wood glue. Everything is under construction. They’ve knocked out walls, they’ve put walls up, they’ve painted, they’ve brought rocks in from the river that runs behind their house and used them to decorate the walls around the fireplace. Or at least where the fireplace will be.

It isn’t long before Steve and Grace come in the front door from gymnastics. Grace and Rachael hold each other for a few moments before Grace makes her way to the kitchen. She looks into the oven.

“Mom, the bread’s starting to get weird,” she says.

“Oh, I forgot about that. Take it out,” Mitzi says.

For dinner, we have roasted chicken, sweet potatoes, rolls, and a spinach salad. We fill our paper plates at the stove top and carry them to the dining room table. The conversation goes to a copperhead snake Mitzi killed and put in a jar. No one knows where it is, so I don’t get the chance to see it, but I am shown the two jars of fish heads Mitzi is planning to shellac for a commercial/artistic purpose I’ve been told not to reveal, lest someone steal the idea.

“Don’t eat the chicken bones, Neal,” Mitzi tells him. We all turn to face him. He bites down and there’s a crunch.

“I like them,” he says.

“Okay, then,” Mitzi says.

We talk about how some people suck the marrow from chicken bones. I remember my grandmother once telling me she used to suck the marrow. Grace wants to try it. She breaks a bone and puts it to her mouth.

After dinner, Anna and Neal sit at the table doing homework while Steve and Mitzi clean the kitchen. Rachael and Grace pick at the food that’s left, not because they are hungry, but to have something to do in each other’s presence. These people like being under the same roof, sharing the same space. The girls feed on each others' energy, and it empowers Anna to join them on the balance beam.

Even though they are triplets—sharing nearly the same life for 13 years—Neal has his own energy, separate from Anna and Grace. He sits at the table, undistracted by all that’s going on around him.

Mitzi makes everyone a cup of hot tea. She hands me mine in an oversized mug. When it’s cooled slightly, I sip it. It’s fruity and sweet and comforting. I follow Anna and Rachael upstairs to the bedroom closet. There’s a small hole in the back, under a shelf, just big enough for me to get my grown-man hips through. On the other side of the hole is a tiny carpeted room. Anna and Grace have written quotes on the ceiling in marker. They’ve drawn on butcher paper that hangs on the walls. Grace crawls into the room and she argues with Anna about whose quotes are better in the way siblings do. Or the way people do with their significant others when they are tired. Just because. Rachael’s presence keeps the girls from taking the argument further, it seems. They are so happy to have her here in their little room.

It’s a perfect place to read, and I grab one of the children’s books from the corner, but it’s too long. I won’t get through it without completely secluding myself from the community of the room. We decide I should look at the pictures and Anna will tell me what’s happening. It turns out to be the best way to read the book. It’s about a teacher who loses her cat and her class helps her look for it. The teacher is also looking for a husband. In the end, she finds both.

Downstairs, Neal asks me to help him look for a sheet of paper he’s lost. He tells me it’s in one of his notebooks, but he won’t let me actually look in them for him. Instead, he goes through each one.

“This is the one! This is where I put it!” He says each time he gets to a new folder. He never finds it.

Rachael, Steve, and Mitzi sit in the den after the triplets have gone up to bed. Anna comes back down to take the laptop from Steve because she needs to do something for her homework, so Steve goes to bed after acknowledging Anna always comes back down stairs to use the laptop.

"No I don't," she says.

When she finishes with the laptop, she goes to bed. Rachael moves from the sofa to the chair to sit with her mother. They talk about going to look at a house in Little Rock in the next few days. They're looking at houses on her phone. Something for Rachael. Something cheap, something broken, something they can fix together.

I spend the night in Neal’s room. When I wake up, there are chocolate chip pancakes and eggs. Neal has a hair dryer in his shoes. They are wet.

“What happened to Neal’s shoes?” I ask.

“Neal happened to Neal’s shoes,” Anna says.

As I walk out the door for work, Mitzi tells me to come back any time. She tells me she pays pretty well if I ever want to grout some tile.

Sweet Potato Recipe, as told by Mitzi:

I take sweet potatoes and mash them up and put butter and sugar and cinnamon. I don’t measure anything out. I throw them into a cast-iron skillet, cover it with aluminum foil and put it in the oven for a while.

No matter where you are, if you want to invite me to dinner, I’d love to come. In return, I’ll do my best to be a good conversationalist and document a small piece of your everyday life. I’m a fun dinner guest, people. Kids love me. I’ll give your pets a lot of attention. If you want to invite your weird uncle over for dinner, too, so he’ll stop bugging you, now’s the time! I’ll talk to him so you don’t have to.

I live in Little Rock, Arkansas, but I’ll keep a list and when I’m traveling in your area, I’d love to meet you and your family/roommates/cat and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Email me at gchoate17 (at) outlook [dot] com with the subject line: Dinner at Our House.

[dinneratourhouse]

Dinner at the Stuart House: November 21, 2014

The Stuart House: Micky, Heather, Copeland, Beckhem, and Vice the Dog.

Location: Quapaw Quarter, Little Rock, Arkansas.

Menu: Rotisserie Chicken, Corn Casserole, Mashed Potatoes, and Croissants. Chicken recipe below, casserole recipe here.

As I park across the street in front of the large Victorian house with a wrap-around porch, I see Micky open the front door.

“Come on in,” he yells to me, still across the street. He also says something about the baby being asleep and the door having a tendency to slam.

By the time I get to the door, a large white lab is looking at me through the screen. I walk cautiously inside, making sure to ease the door closed behind me. Hardwoods. High ceilings. Early 20th century. I follow the sound of voices through a den, a dining room, to the kitchen. I followed Micky’s voice, but I find Heather leaning over the stove top. Micky’s voice still echoes against the wood throughout the house. It’s become a sound to me, but Heather understands it. Years of practice has left them comfortable communicating with each other using the echoes of this house.

When Micky returns to the kitchen, he’s worked up a sweat. He rolls the sleeves up on his button-down, he takes his sweater vest off, and in doing so he transforms himself from the man who owns Minton and Sons Tax Service to the kid I knew in high school. It’s not long until I’m reminded he is both of those people.

When I feel a shock on my butt, I turn to five-year-old Copeland running away from me with a wooden spoon. I try to take his picture, but he won’t let me. He makes a game of hiding from my camera.

I pour myself a beer from the growler Micky picked up at the liquor store. Stone’s Throw, we think, but it could be the other one he got. They aren’t labeled. Micky pours himself one and asks Heather if she wants a beer as she walks in from the dining room.

“Yeah, is this mine?” she asks, grabbing the one on the island Micky already poured for himself.

When the new one he pours comes out with too much head, Heather ribs him about the bad pour. Micky looks boyishly disappointed, then says, “Yeah, that one’s yours,” giving her the better-poured beer in what translates to me as an admirable display of marital affection.

Heather and Micky move around each other flawlessly in the kitchen, always working as a team. He washes dishes, she puts them up. He feeds Vice, she tends to Copeland. She moves the rotisserie, he mashes the potatoes. When some potatoes end up on the drawer handle, they both come together to try and get Vice to lick it off.

When the baby wakes up, Micky brings him into the kitchen and they take turns holding him as they continue working on dinner. They pass him off like a 20-pound baton. Micky makes room in the fridge for the two growlers we’re drinking from.

“Babe, what the hell…?” He says playfully while pulling out a large bowl with no top. “Choate, you want some old tuna fish?”

The top of the tuna is noticeably hardened. Heather laughs and says, “I was planning to eat that the next day.” Micky puts it back on the top shelf of the fridge.

“Why are you putting it back in there?!” She says.

“There’s no reason to pull it out now,” he says. But then he does pull it out and put it in the sink to wash later.

When dinner is ready, we sit down to chicken, mashed potatoes, corn casserole, and croissants. This is a pretty standard meal in this house, with the exception of the corn casserole, which has been added for my benefit. We sit around their glass-topped table, Beckhem sits in his high chair. Until he decides to stand.

“Buddy, you better sit down,” Heather says. Beckhem doesn’t sit.

They tell me Copeland wants to do right, all the time. He wants to succeed in school, and he does. If they tell him to do something, he will. Beckhem is the opposite. If Heather and Micky tell him to not hit his head on the table, he will absolutely hit his head on the table until it welts. It’s clear they love them both in their different ways.

In looking at what’s on the table and what is in their kitchen, it’s also clear they believe in eating organic foods, and they support local commerce. They order their meat once a month from Falling Sky Farm. They speak with conviction about the benefits of giving back to the community in which they live, in which they are raising their two children. Not long ago, I ran into Micky at the Arkansas Cornbread Festival where he was volunteering. When I saw him, he was changing out a trash bag with a smile on his face. The time I saw him before that, he invited me to a fundraiser he was organizing for a cause I can’t remember. What I do remember was how sincere he was about raising money for something good. Just like he’s sincere now as we talk at his family’s table about how important it is to give kids a chance in life, despite the terrible situations parents sometimes put them in. He doesn’t want to talk about helping, he doesn’t want to get credit for putting on a successful fundraiser, he genuinely wants to help.

After dinner, Copeland and I play a game in the den. He sets balls in the chair—a couple of blue ones, some yellow ones, and red ones.

“If I pick up a blue one, you sling me onto the couch when I run by,” he says. “If it’s a yellow one, then you go slow. And if it’s red, um…um…if it’s red…you don’t do anything.”

As he steps back into the hallway to get a running start, I’m nervous about what I’m actually doing. I don’t quite understand the rules of the game. He charges down the hall on his bare feet. I’m standing with my feet spread wide, my knees bent, like an infielder, and just before he gets to me, he comes to a complete stop at the chair. I can tell he’s searching for a blue ball. He picks it up, and then takes two steps toward me. I pick him up under his arms, my thumb covering the logo of his elementary school on his knit polo shirt. I drop him onto the couch like I do my nieces.

“I got the blue ball,” he tells me. “That was too slow.” And then he tells me he’s winning, I’m losing. I didn’t know we were facing off. The next time he grabs a blue ball from the chair I throw him across the room like a large pillow. He laughs, then declares he has earned another 25 points. When he grabs a red ball, he takes two steps toward me and then we just look at each other. He makes 15 points doing so.

Heather sits in the chair with Beckhem and laughs along with us. Micky prepares to head to the duck woods, and he stops to show me his shotgun. As we walk out of the house together, Copeland announces that he’s somehow up 89 to zero in our game. I have lost the game, but I had good time playing.

Rotisserie Chicken recipe as sent from Micky via email:

Buy chicken, rip guts out, tie legs together, shove a pole up its ass, spin for 90 minutes.

No matter where you are, if you want to invite me to dinner, I’d love to come. In return, I’ll do my best to be a good conversationalist and document a small piece of your everyday life. I’m a fun dinner guest, people. Kids love me. I’ll give your pets a lot of attention. If you want to invite your weird uncle over for dinner, too, so he’ll stop bugging you, now’s the time! I’ll talk to him so you don’t have to.

I live in Little Rock, Arkansas, but I’ll keep a list and when I’m traveling in your area, I’d love to meet you and your family/roommates/cat and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Email me at gchoate17 (at) outlook [dot] com with the subject line: Dinner at Our House.

[dinneratourhouse]

Dinner at the Dziga House: November 19, 2014

The Dziga House: Linda, Rachel, Niranjan, Lily the Dog, and a Cat that Stayed Hidden.

Location: Capital View, Little Rock, Arkansas.

Menu: Butter Chicken over Rice, Naan, Apple Crisp. Recipe below.

I push the doorbell and hear it ring on the inside for a half-moment before a dog’s bark drowns it out. When Rachel opens the door, I meet Lily, a labrador with a yellow tint to her white fur and a pink tint to her nose. Her toenails click on the hardwood floors as she sniffs all sides of my legs.

In the adjacent den, a woman with long, blonde hair stands up to greet me. Rachel introduces her as her mother. An Indian man holding a wooden spoon peers through the house to see who has arrived, then he steps back toward the stove top. It’s clear he’s responsible for the enticing smell of curry wafting through the house.

“Butter chicken” has got to be the simplest way to describe the dish. Once, I was at a restaurant in Bosnia and I ordered something off the menu called “Steak with egg.” I thought the translator probably just got lazy and what I was actually ordering was something more elaborate. When it came, it was literally a steak with an egg on it. Not even any parsley. Ninja’s butter chicken is not chicken with butter on it. (It’s somewhat ridiculous for me to start a food blog because my palette is hardly refined, as they say. When I eat alone, I eat at buffets, so I’m not going to be able to tell you the precise level of flavor coming out of Ninja’s butter chicken. If you’re looking for that kind of description, you’re just going to have to check out the recipe below and make it for yourself. It will be worth it. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

While Ninja places some pieces of naan in the oven, Rachel sits at a small table in front of the tiled bar. She thumbs through the latest issue of Rolling Stone, which features a young Bob Dylan on its cover. When the conversation shifts to “Interstellar,” she puts the magazine down and I listen as she and Ninja have the most casually scientifically intelligent conversation I may have ever witnessed. Somewhere between mentions of quantum physics, I think, and the time-space continuum, Rachel pauses and looks at me.

“I don’t want to spoil it for you, if you haven’t seen it,” she says.

I realize I haven’t enough of an understanding of science for whatever she says to actually ruin anything for me.

Lily announces the arrival of Jeff with his dog Jackson. They’ve brought a rice cooker and a thermos full of already-cooked rice. He’s brought a large bottle of pinot grigio, but I decline a glass in favor of a bottle of Shiner. Jeff is a large man in stature and also in personality. His dog is the opposite. Jackson looks to be an Australian shepherd mix, and he’s reach an age where his muscles have deteriorated to the point one side of his head appears concave.

Moments later, Marsha also gets a greeting from Lily. She has short, white hair, and clear frames, which give her a classy look. She carries an apple crisp she’s made.

“There’s no added sugar,” she says.

We all sit comfortably around the table together and discuss Jeff’s upcoming trip to Seattle. It was in the Pacific Northwest that he fell in love with a certain kind of bread. When he researched where it came from, he was astounded to discover it came from Arkansas at Old Mill.

“I went all the way up there to discover something great was made here,” he says.

Jeff founded and still owns Damgoode Pies. He’s made a living by making pizzas with quality ingredients. As much as I love Papa John’s, I can tell when I look at their founder in the kitchen on the commercials that his apron rarely gets dirty. In contrast, I can tell by looking at Jeff totally out of context of a pizza shop, he spends a lot of time in a pizza shop. He’s currently working to open a new store where Boscos used to be. I used to work at Bosco’s so I know exactly what he’s talking about when he discusses walls he’s knocking out. He’s excited about it.

“When you give your life to work, it kind of sucks, but sometimes you get to do some really special things,” he says.

We talk about food and travel nearly exclusively—two things that keep me excited. Rachel is thinking about going to Hellfest in France. Linda had Lizard Pate in the Carribean. Marsha knows a girl who moved to Arkansas to start Farm Girl Meats, where she raises happy animals in the most humane way possible. We talk local, we talk organic, and then we talk about how Ninja puts butter on cheap hamburger buns to dip into his chai tea because it’s the closest thing he has found to taste like something he used to love back in India.

Food has such powerful properties of connection. The generic hamburger buns have connected Ninja to the memory of home. Pizza has connected Jeff to a life of doing something really special. The butter chicken has connected me to the Dziga house.

I have to leave before everyone else, unfortunately. There’s mention of Marsha playing the guitar, and there’s still plenty of wine left. I wish I could stay. I decide a new rule for the blog will be to never schedule anything after a dinner.

Butter Chicken Recipe, as described by Rachel in an email:

Take about 6oz per person chicken, marinate 2-6 hrs before cooking in 2-3 tablespoons of yogurt, 1 tsp of curry, tumeric and chili powder, three thinly sliced cloves of garlic, juice of half a lime and a 1/2 oz thinly sliced ginger.

In a large skillet, saute 4 thinly chopped onions in about a stick or 1/2 cup of butter on med heat until translucent and soft (salt and pepper lightly to pull out moisture and flavor) takes about 10 mins, add 4 chopped tomatoes and a large bell pepper, saute for 5-10 more min.

Ninja uses a season pkg-here is the brand on Amazon, here.

Mix one pkg for about each 16 oz or lb with water as directed, pour over veggies and another 1/2 cup of butter, let cook until 5-10 min then pour all into a blender-blend until smooth. In the same pan add marinated chicken, and some butter for light pan searing. Cook lightly, then add blended curry on top-cover and let simmer until chicken is fully cooked.

In the end, add a 4oz of milk or cream.

No matter where you are, if you want to invite me to dinner, I’d love to come. In return, I’ll do my best to be a good conversationalist and document a small piece of your everyday life. I’m a fun dinner guest, people. Kids love me. I’ll give your pets a lot of attention. If you want to invite your weird uncle over for dinner, too, so he'll stop bugging you, now's the time! I'll talk to him so you don't have to.

I live in Little Rock, Arkansas, but I’ll keep a list and when I’m traveling in your area, I’d love to meet you and your family/roommates/cat and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Email me at gchoate17 (at) outlook [dot] com with the subject line: Dinner at Our House.

[dinneratourhouse]

Dinner at the Carder House: November 17, 2014.

The Carder House: Jessica, Bowie the Dog, Yoshi the Cat.

Location: Capital View, Little Rock, Arkansas.

Menu: Chicken, Asparagus and Squash, and Black Bean and Corn Salsa. Recipe below.

Jessica opens the front door to her apartment, which is one side of a bricked, duplexed home. Eighty-pound Bowie, a pitbull/American bulldog mix charges the door. He’s an intimidating animal at first, but he has an adorable personality hidden away inside his broad head. Yoshi is interested in my arrival but he keeps his distance like cats have been known to do, though Jessica says he's less like a cat and more like if a dog bred with Satan himself.

"I love him," she says quickly afterward.

“You eat meat, don’t you?” She asks me. Relieved, when I tell her I do, she pulls a casserole dish of baked chicken from the oven. There is sautéed squash mixed with asparagus on the stove top.

“I don’t have a table, so you can just sit wherever you want—on the couch, or we can sit Japanese style around the coffee table.”

I sit on the couch with my plate on the coffee table in front of a large computer screen where Jessica’s streaming the Concert for Valor. There’s a pop artist singing a song I’ve learned from listening to the radio lately, but I couldn’t tell you her name. I'm so excited about the food, I forget to take a picture of it until after I've already made a good dent in the meal.

Jessica lovingly scolds Bowie and Yoshi for begging while we eat dinner and share a bottle of Malbec she opened yesterday.

We talk about the time we crashed at her sister’s place in New York five years ago. We talk about how she used to cut my ex-wife’s hair. We talk about her recent trip to DC.

Jessica met some guys in a band called RDGLDGRN (pronounced Red Gold Green) while in DC and the meeting's got her inspired. One of the perks of eating in front of a large computer is you can look things up in moments. As we talk, we Google. She shows me her website where she posts her photography and paintings. Jessica being inspired by her recent travels bleeds into me being inspired by sitting in my little city with an artist who wants to make things happen. We both want to make things happen, but we aren’t quite sure what.

“The trick is to get creative people to come together to do something, even if you don’t know what that something is,” I say. “Once they are together, something good will happen.” And I believe it.

Jessica gives Bowie a small piece of chicken. She makes him do tricks—shake, sit, he balances on two legs, and he plays dead.

Back in the kitchen, Jessica cleans up quickly while I partake of the no-bake cookies on the stove top, and I study the Marilyn Monroe magnets on her refrigerator door while doing so.

Jessica and Bowie walk me outside while Yoshi waits just inside the door, looking out. From my truck, I watch Jessica lead Bowie back into the house and she closes the door. I sit in my truck in silence for a minute before I drive away and I allow myself to miss my dog.

Recipe: Black Bean and Corn Salsa, sent via text from Jessica...

"Black beans, white kernel corn, a can of original Rotel, finely chopped cilantro, garlic, cumin, onion powder, sea salt, lime juice, and white vinegar. I do it all by my taste buds. I cook like I paint, just throw stuff at it till it starts to look appealing."

No matter where you are, if you want to invite me to dinner, I’d love to come. In return, I’ll do my best to be a good conversationalist and document a small piece of your everyday life. I’m a fun dinner guest, people. Kids love me. I’ll give your pets a lot of attention. If you want to invite your newly divorced, mildly attractive friend over for dinner, too, so she can practice flirting with a single dude, I don’t care! I can do that for you.

I live in Little Rock, Arkansas, but I’ll keep a list and when I’m traveling in your area, I’d love to meet you and your family/roommates/cat and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Email me at gchoate17 (at) outlook [dot] com with the subject line: Dinner at Our House.

[dinneratourhouse]

Dinner at the Cox-Rogers House: November 16, 2014.

The Cox-Rogers House: Sarah, Barrett, and Oliver the Cat.

Location: Indian Hills, North Little Rock, Arkansas.

Menu: Healthy Corn Chowder (and some kind of bread that was good). Recipe here.

When I walk into the house, I hear Barrett say to Sarah—from the living room to the kitchen—“I don’t think Guy’s going to mind if your napkins don’t match.”

“It’s true, I won’t,” I tell her.

Barrett sits on the couch with the football game on. Oliver is planted firmly in his lap. Sarah is setting the table, walking back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room table. When I take a seat on the couch, Oliver steps curiously toward me. He seems to have eyed the strings on my hoodie. He stands on my chest and bats at them for a minute. He sniffs my facial hair, then walks into the kitchen. I follow him.

At the table, Barrett passes me a bowl full of jalapenos and suggests I add them to the chowder.

Barrett and Sarah talk about how early they wake up to go to the gym together. They get up before 5 a.m. They see the same people every day and seeing those same people holds them accountable, even if they rarely speak to them. They have nicknames for them. They know which retirees they can’t exercise beside because the smell of cologne is overpowering.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not going to take a shower before I go to the gym,” Barrett says.

Barrett and I get seconds and we use the bread to sop up what remains at the bottom of our bowls.

After dinner, we all take seats on the couch, Barrett and I watch the football game while Sarah sips at her white wine and uses her phone to keep us updated on the threatening winter weather.

“What color is the other team?” She asks as a way to remind us how unimportant football actually is. She decides to root for the blue team, the Colts. And then she picks out a DVD from a basket on the entertainment center and takes Oliver to the bedroom to watch a movie with her.

Just before halftime, Barrett shows me the radar and I decide to head back across the river before the snow gets to us.

No matter where you are, if you want to invite me to dinner, I’d love to come. In return, I’ll do my best to be a good conversationalist and document a small piece of your everyday life. I’m a fun dinner guest, people. Kids love me. I’ll give your pets a lot of attention. If you want to invite your newly divorced, mildly attractive friend over for dinner, too, so she can practice flirting with a single dude, I don’t care! I can do that for you.

I live in Little Rock, Arkansas, but I’ll keep a list and when I’m traveling in your area, I’d love to meet you and your family/roommates/cat and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Email me at gchoate17 (at) outlook [dot] com with the subject line: Dinner at Our House.

[dinneratourhouse]

Dinner at the Arant-Choate House: November 15, 2014

The Arant-Choate House: Audra, Will, Norah, Bo, and Ruby the English Bulldog.

Location: Hillcrest, Little Rock, Arkansas.

Menu: Potato Ham Chowder with French Bread. Recipe here.

Will and Norah come in from gymnastics just before Audra and Bo come in from the grocery store. The kids run around while Will puts up groceries and Audra starts cooking dinner. Once the groceries are put up, Will helps Audra with food prep and washes grapes for Norah to snack on while dinner is cooking.

After the kids finish eating dinner, Audra puts them in the bathtub while I get seconds and Will starts clearing the table. The kids are laughing in the other room when Audra and Will jump into a cleaning mode. They talk about the preciousness of the time that exists when the kids are in the tub. It’s the only time they have to really clean house, even though it’s only a few minutes. By the time I finish my second bowl of chowder, the kitchen is spotless.

Will and Audra go get the kids out of the bathtub, and the children toddle in with their pajamas on. Audra sets dessert on the table—something called “Blondies,” which is essentially a white brownie, leftover from the night before. They are sweet and gooey and delicious. We all eat a square, then talk while Will counts off how many laps the children have run around the center of the house. The kids laugh satisfactorily when they reach lap 10.

“Tickle me,” Norah says to me. I do. When I’m too tired to tickle her anymore, she starts showing me her ability to do a cartwheel. She struggles with the landing in the way four-year-olds do.

“I’ve got a hundred dollars a week in that cartwheel,” Will says.

Will and Audra agree it would be nice to let the kids watch television for a half-hour—even though they’ve already watched “plenty of TV” today.

“It’s amazing how captivated they are by it,” Will and Audra say. I can tell they feel guilty, they worry about how much TV they’ve allowed their children to watch, which is no-doubt somewhere way south of the average American child’s screen time.

I see how worked Will and Audra are, and I can sense the shared exhale they feel when the kids are sitting together quietly on the couch, and I think, “They do this every…single…night.”

No matter where you are, if you want to invite me to dinner, I’d love to come. In return, I’ll do my best to be a good conversationalist and document a small piece of your everyday life. I’m a fun dinner guest, people. Kids love me. I’ll give your pets a lot of attention. If you want to invite your newly divorced, mildly attractive friend over for dinner, too, so she can practice flirting with a single dude, I don’t care! I can do that for you.

I live in Little Rock, Arkansas, but I’ll keep a list and when I’m traveling in your area, I’d love to meet you and your family/roommates/cat and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Email me at gchoate17 (at) outlook [dot] com with the subject line: Dinner at Our House.

[dinneratourhouse]

If you feed me, I will come...

I live with four other dudes and we aren’t the cleanest bunch. Plates are generally stacked high in the sink, so trying to cook for myself ends up being way more labor-intensive than it should be. And really, that's just an excuse I can hide behind right now because I’m not much of a cook anyway. My recent cravings for potato soup would not have been satisfied by whatever I would’ve made for myself, so I asked my friends if they’d make me potato soup. Surprisingly, lots of people—these people I haven’t seen in real life in so long, but interact with online quite often—agreed to. I hated having to choose just one person to eat with, so I told the others I’d come eat with them sometime in the future.

This blog is my attempt to eat dinner at a friend’s house as much as possible. It’s about feeding myself and enjoying the culinary skills of people I know, but it’s also about creating a sense of physical presence and community in a digital age. I don’t want people to go all out and prepare a large meal because they have a guest who will take pictures and write about the experience, I just want them to set one more place at the table so I can see what their everyday lives are like at dinner.

No matter where you are, if you want to invite me to dinner, I’d love to come. In return, I’ll do my best to be a good conversationalist and document a small piece of your everyday life. I’m a fun dinner guest, people. Kids love me. I’ll give your pets a lot of attention. If you want to invite your newly divorced, mildly attractive friend over for dinner, too, so she can practice flirting with a single dude, I don’t care! I can do that for you.

I live in Little Rock, Arkansas, but I’ll keep a list and when I’m traveling in your area, I’d love to meet you and your family/roommates/cat and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Email me at gchoate17 (at) outlook [dot] com with the subject line: Dinner at Our House.