A Good Dinner Party

We had our friends Ken and Melanie and their baby Andrew over for dinner last Sunday (you can see Andrew's foot in the top left of the picture above). We didn't make plans until Sunday morning, and I happened to have bought enough food during my big weekly Saturday grocery run to cover dinner. It was a fun, spontaneous meal, and much more tasty and successful than dinner parties I've spent all week planning.

Here's what we made, clockwise from top left:

• Salad with fresh orange sections, walnuts, cinnamon, and an orange juice vinaigrette, modeled entirely after your own Moroccan salad. I don't have your recipe, but I guessed, and it turned out very well.
• Chicken wings marinated by Lawson in a mysterious blend that contained star anise and honey and who knows what else and then grilled slowly over charcoal.
• Those white beans with rosemary that I continue to be obsessed with.
• Shrimp, red and yellow peppers, and onions marinated, grilled over high heat, and then tossed with cilantro, more lemon, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

We didn't even miss the starch, because the beans seemed to fill that gap. Even Andrew the Baby tried a bite of beans. He also ate mashed avocado that his parents brought from home.