Graduation parties

I'm doing a bunch of graduation dinners and parties, three in a row to be precise. The first one was Sunday, for a library school graduate. I thought I'd keep the menu simple; it was a donated meal - the library of the library school where I work has a silent auction in April (National Library Week) and I donated two meals to be auctioned off. I made asparagus tart, with baby leeks and the asparagus, served with a salad of slightly spicey greens, with a chive & mustard vinaigrette, and then roast chicken (chicken & asparagus from Matt Smith) that had been rubbed with preserved lemons and herbs de Provence, and a little cider poured over. I didn't want to make another vegetable with the chicken, so I made a rice pilaf with orzo & lots of vegetables - carrots & onions & zucchini & lovage. Chive sour cream crescent rolls with good WI butter. And a lime-coconut-rhubarb trifle with strawberries for dessert. They wanted to eat at 4:30, so I thought I'd be home by 7:00 (and relax and watch the Sopranos) but the diners were a leisurely talkative bunch - I had to call for my ride to get things moving. I didn't get home until about 10 till 8:00, and so was washing all the crusty roasting pans at 10:30, after the Sopranos, and I 'll have to watch the episode again OnDemand, because I was dozing off ... I felt like every big vessel in my kitchen needed to be washed - the sink at the supper club house is too small for half-sheet pans & roasting racks and big steel bowls, so I brought everything home dirty.

Next up is a party for 26 people, for a boy high school grad, buffet Italian mostly, and then a nice sit-down dinner for 12, for another high school kid, a girl this time.