Midnight Dinner

It is time for an actual update!

Rather than try to play catch up I figured I'd focus on what happened this past week. We (the folks working in the costume shop for the summer plus spouses and a few inter-departmental friends) held a Midnight Dinner!

What is a Midnight Dinner?

A Midnight Dinner is inspired by the book, The Night Circus, in which a group of characters meet together at midnight to feast and plan the inception of a magical Night Circus. The first course of dinner is served at the stroke of midnight.

Our friend, Bridgette, has been trying to convince us for a while now that we should have one and with school finally out of the way, we were free to finally do it.

In preparation many of us read the book (Ben and I are both still reading it). It's a fun read that I highly recommend, but this isn't a book review! Like the circus in the book, the dress code was set to be black and white with accents of red. The dinners include decadent foods including several desserts which Ben and our friend, Kelsey, were eager to use as inspiration. As a result we had a delicious spread of varied foods.

This delight is a traditional French dessert called a croquembuche (pronounced krokemboosh ... we think). It is a tower of caramel-cream stuffed puffs, dipped in molten sugar and stacked into a tower. As the sugar hardens, the puffs stay together. Then you drizzle the molten sugar over to create a spun-sugar effect. It was to. die. for.

Chocolate mice from Kelsey - straight from the book!

Left: Watermelon and mint lemonade Right: the dinner spread, artichokes, fajitas, and queso!

Digging in!

The dress was black-and-white with accents of red. We all looked pretty darn good if I do say so myself!

 

  ... and the sexy face, of course!

Kelsey introduced us to the game of Telestrations. You start with a written word or phrase and pass your paper/dry erase book to the next person and they draw a picture of the word/phrase. Then it gets passed along again and the next person writes down what they believe to be the word/phrase, and so on and so forth. Like telephone but with an added challenge. Hilarity ensued.

 

For example:

I highly recommend the game to anyone who enjoys fun.

The night ended around 3:15am and we all slowly mad our way home and to bed. I wouldn't be surprised if we did this again on a night where we won't have to go to work the next day...