I got antsy today and thought up my dream dinner party for you. Check this out:

Dream Guests: Let’s invite creative, smart people with a wicked sense of humor. Check out this especially charming story about the Celibate Love Affair of Nora Ephron and Mike Nichols. So I propose you invite them (I know they both died. Let’s not ruin this fantasy with details. We’ll also invite their spouses, Diane Sawyer and Nick Pileggi.) It ought to be raining outside, and we can sit around the table talking and laughing until all of a sudden another bottle of wine is gone and we look up and say how did it get to be so late?

Dream Food: How about this rather dramatically named Change Your Life Chicken. Listen, I don’t know if it will change your life. I don’t know that I want anyone to have a life that could be ‘changed’ by a chicken recipe. But I can tell you this is a delicious recipe, super easy for a weeknight and good enough for guests like Nora and Mike. Serve it with some good bread and wine, and you’ve got the makings of a pretty great night.

Dream Conversation: After you eat dinner, you can lead Nora and Mike around your mansion and show them all of your Secret Passage Bookshelves. They are the types of dinner guests who will stop talking to examine your books, and pull a few down and talk about the time they bumped into Amy Tan at City Lights in San Francisco and they went for gnocchi in Little Italy. I’m 100% sure that’s a story that would be told at this dinner party.

Dream Dessert: Go to your couch, the big squishy one you have in front of the fire. (Wow. Your house is gigantic. I had no idea.) Nora will tuck her legs underneath her and pull a throw over her lap. Mike will tell hilarious stories about Meryl Streep. For dessert, you can serve this absolutely ridiculous Berry Cereal Milkshake. We are grown-ass people, and we have no business drinking these, but we will anyway. Nora will tell a story about how she once dumped a bow of Lucky Charms on Delia’s head. Hilarity will ensue.

 Tell me about your dream dinner party? Who is there, what are we eating and drinking?

 OXO

Julie

PS – I almost forgot the Dream Soundtrack: Of course someone at our dinner party will sit down at your grand piano and play Hey Jude. It seems like it might be that kind of party.