Special Dinner: October 2013

Mr. E decided on doing special dinners with a color theme this year. When Mr. E was little, he associated months with a combination of two colors (much like his colors for weekdays). His aim is to make dinner with ingredients that are naturally as close to each month’s colors as possible; food dyes are right out for this project. October colors are black and orange.

Orange was not that difficult, but black was almost impossible. For an appetizer, Mr. E made a pureed squash, carrot and sweet potato soup. Then we had home made sushi, and ended the meal with chocolate chip cookies and milk.

I was very impressed with Mr. E’s sushi. He filled them with roasted squash, carrot, and sweet potato (leftover from making the soup) plus smoked salmon. The seaweed wrappers looked so dark they read black in the late afternoon light. The really nifty touch was to use some cooking water from the squash to color the rice. The color wasn’t very strong, but there was a definite hint of orange.

Another colorwise impressive feature was our drink: dandelion wine that we picked up at a local farm. It looked very yellow, if not orange, especially against the orange table setting.

The wine tasted very different. I think we ended up calling the taste vegetable-y. I don’t think it will be a favorite, but I’m glad to have tasted it.

Black wasn’t only difficult for food, but table setting as well. (I seriously don’t like black. Living in New York City desensitized me a bit, but I do not like it. at. all.) When Mr. E announced his color theme for this year’s special dinners, I decided I wouldn’t buy anything new for the project. So, I had to cheat to make the black and orange table work.

I made placemats from cardstock, which was a little too painfully orange to go with our dishes. To tone the color down a bit, I made “woven” overlays from paper strips on the orange and brown spectrum that I cut out of magazines. Our small paisley plates had just enough orange to play into the color scheme, but other than that we had to do with white dishes and glass. The yellow napkins also toned down the intense orange of the cardstock placemats and went with the orange Marimekko poppy fabric runner.

Our black and orange dinner was, all in all, a success. I hope we both got our brains in good shape for problem solving, for November will be even more difficult: silver and grey. Oy vey!

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