The bottom line is..

Last night, we had three good friends over for dinner. I was so sorry to see that one of them was missing.. We are used to seeing all 4 of them, but Mrs. T couldn't make it. I hope she won't miss too many other gatherings?

I told my friends I would take care of the kitchen part. The fridge was packed with food to choose from. It's like having your own supermarket in your house and to me, that's the best way to start figuring out a menu. Opening the fridge door and sitting in front of it, that's when the inspiration bubbles up. There were veal steaks, turnips, green beans, pumpkin, celery root, 3 colors of peppers, carrots, mushrooms, zucchini, .. I was so excited to start cooking and that's exactly what I did.

Since two of our friends eat low-carb and I'm a carb counting diabetic, it's a joy to cook low-carb. Hubby is a true potato lover, but this time I tricked him. Making scalloped "potatoes" au gratin without the potatoes, was a great idea. My dish was packed with thinly sliced pumpkin, turnip, celery root. In between layers, there was shredded cheese and a topping of white sauce. A good deal of freshly ground nutmeg, pepper and salt was the perfect seasoning for this dish. It's absolutely delicious and heart warming and there were no left overs. That says it all, right?

We started with a bowl of creamy, velvety soup, full of leeks, carrots, onion, celery and celery root. A marrow bone gave it its wonderful flavor. Some thinly sliced and toasted Turkish pide was a low-carb alternative for the usual bread roll.

Indian beans (Gujerati) are another favorite of this group, so I like to make these as a side dish: fresh green beans, mustard seeds, garlic, red pepper flakes and a good pinch of pepper.

A colorful bowl of very finely chopped vegetables (3 colors of peppers, carrots, onion, green celery, green beans, zucchini) is a favorite of mine and a thankful dish you can make ahead. There's no need to cook the veggies, since they are so finely chopped. There was a bag of fresh cranberries in the fridge as well, so some Ikea style cranberry compote was made in an instant. I'm sure the carb lovers liked that too!

For the first time, I prepared veal steaks. I got them from a Moroccan butcher and I wasn't too sure about the cooking time. Maybe I should've pounded them in between plastic wrap, to make them thinner? They weren't cooked all the way through, so some steaks went back to the grill. The juices from the meat were the perfect base for my tarragon gravy, enriched with a dash of Noilly Prat and some green peppercorns. Together with the meat, I baked some zucchini fries and quartered mushrooms.

My guests were to come over by 7 PM. Around 6 PM I still hadn't figured out what dessert I was going to serve. A low-carb dessert is hard to found and I couldn't find one that looked appealing to me. I remembered I had a bag of hand picked pitted cherries in the freezer and that's when Eva said: how about a cherry crumble? That was a great idea! I made the crumble out of almond flour, to have less carbs in it. It was bubbly and fulfulling and so bad for my blood glucose, but my correction bolus solved that problem real fast. And guess what: I should not have worried about dessert, because one of the friends brought a home made bowl of creamy tiramisu! Just the way we like it!

Nigella Lawson style, I got up in the middle of the night, to finish the last portion of cherry crumble. With one difference: I was allowed to have that crumble, because I needed to treat a nightly sugar drop..

The best conversations are the conversations we have over dinner. We had a great time and I'm so looking forward to the next gathering.