Today was my 4th 3izooma (dinner party) in a month. I'm exhausted. I have one more scheduled next Sunday then I'm taking a looong break. It's been almost 4 months since we moved into our new house. Before that we were in the small rental and mom was staying with us while she was sick. Obviously, we had no desire to socialize much for the past year....we only saw 1 family on a regular basis. So, I used Ramadan as a opportunity to dip our feet back in the socialization pool. I had 3 the last 2 weeks of Ramadan, and I had 2 scheduled for after Ramadan. 4 down 1 to go.
I truly love having people over. I love to cook and it gives me such a feeling of satisfaction successfully making meals that I learned from from my mom and grandmother. These dinner parties remind me of how easy my mom made it seem when she would have them on a weekly basis. She made it seem effortless. I know now of course it was not. For example, yesterday we spent the day at 6 Flags with the kids - a 90 minute drive away, and a day of walking in 90+ degree heat at an amusement park. Fun for them, for us - not so much. I hadn't really done any prework for today's dinner, except take the meat out to thaw.
So, this morning I was up at 8 chopping, frying and cooking - almost non-stop until people started to arrive. For the first time ever, I accidentally left something in the oven and burned it - luckily it was the cauliflower that I had all the ingredients for still in the fridge. So at 4:30 pm I was frying cauliflower again and making another one. Alhamdulillah all worked out.
I think about my mom and grandmother alot during these days and miss them so much. I love it when Noora says, "Mommy, you are a great cook" because it reminds me how proud I was of my mom and everything she did, and makes me so happy to think that I can ever be anything close to the Mother she is.
