Festa

My friend Giulia has been back in Wellington for a couple of months now, but she’s waited until now to have her first party of 2009. She gives great parties, this girl—she cooks for a week beforehand and pretty much every Italian in town shows up. We’ve been talking about it since she got back, and by the time I got over there Saturday afternoon it was already all on. Giulia and Dara greeted me at the door in their festive pre-party aprons, raring to go.

We chatted about all sorts of things over homemade pastry dough.

My job was to dip cream-filled profiteroles in chocolate.

Filippo cut up the quiches. He also made the seafood salad, the lentil soup, and the chickpeas with onions and greens. Cooking is just one of his many talents, I’m sure he would want you to know.

Okay, here we have—all made by Giulia—almond cantuccini, baci di dama (cookies glued together with chocolate pastry cream), baba (brioche soaked in rum), fruit cookies that I don’t know what they are, and dairy-free carrot cake. The good thing about getting there early? I got to LOAD UP on all this.

And then we see some meringues, the carrot cake again, and these crazy pastries with cream and powdered sugar all on them. Also the three different quiches, which: NOM.

Here’s the end result of all those profiteroles…looks weird, tastes yum.

And all of a sudden it was time to wash off the sugar and get glammed up as people started coming over. Here Giulia models her new dress and her new awesome haircut.

And here I am, channeling my nonna. Can you see my fantastic peacock earrings? They were fantastic indeed, I assure you.

Dara cleans up nice, while Iacopo relied mainly on the power of his eyebrows to weasel his way into the party.

Luis is back in town too, here posing with Giulio and Melissa.

Alessandro’s chin. This is Alessandro’s chin. I will never, ever stop thinking about Alessandro’s chin.

And Marco just sort of…appears in the bottom of the frame, ready to charm you into oblivion.

You know how the ladies love me, right? At a certain point in the night my feet started to hurt and things went in a predictable direction.

And this is how we ended up—full of delicious food, completely overdressed, laughing and talking and hugging and kissing and just having the best time. I didn’t take pictures of all the awesomeness because I was right in the thick of it, the whole night long, but you get the idea, right?