Part of that parently guilt I was feeling might be related to the fact that they have another anniversary rapidly approaching. Every year its the same thing. No they don’t want to have a big party. Just take them out to dinner and relax.
The problem is that with the kids going out to dinner is no longer a nice relaxing experience. You have that 30 minute window in any restaurant and after that things start to go downhill kind of quickly.
So instead of going out I’m thinking of planning some sort of small get together for the folks and some of their friends. No Martha Stewart style 20 course, polished silver, fine china meal for me. I just couldn’t handle all that stuff. I’ve got a list of fun party food recipes that I use for national sanctioned championship game. I’ll slightly modify the ingredients for the old folks but it should work.
I stick to the same recipes every time the guys come over to watch something. Last year we were really pushing it with the World Cup and that made me experiment with some of the recipes. Some of the things turned out like crap so thankfully I had a nice stash of corn chips and salsa stocked up.
I even tried to help out my buddy with some fine aprty food for his daughters big 16th birthday bash. I took my stock recipes and added some party recipe tips for teen-agers that I could find. I actually had to make things alittle bit hotter than usual just in case some of the kids wanted to test out their dare skills. I told my buddy it would be better if the teenage kids were daring each other to try the spicy nachos instead of daring each other to do other things.