Red Roses and Two Dinners…

We have been doing an unusual amount of entertaining in the past couple of weeks. Back to back dinners usually mean we can stretch flower expenses into arrangements that are used several times. In this post, six bunches of red roses from Dimasalang anchor centerpieces for two dinners, and a present… The first dinner was for a friend and her sibling and nephew who were visiting from Jakarta. We used to live in Jakarta and it was good to see M and family after many years… For dinner that evening we had a red theme with the roses and round red plates…

The red plates were laid on black and beige native placemats and the a bright red napkin, silverware, simple glassware and chopsticks finished off the setting. The meal was a Japanese one, with tuna sashimi, tempura, japanese fried chicken and sauteed bean sprouts.

For each of two long rectangular centerpieces, we put oasis floral foam and crammed some 5-6 dozen red roses (with stems cut down to about 2 inches). It was simple, yet eye-catching. Here they are photographed the following morning with some sunlight streaming onto the dining table…

The next evening, we re-used the rose centerpieces for another dinner, this time using LARGE oval serving platters as the dinner plates, banig style placemats, chopsticks and very simple glasses.

The reason for the large oval platters was a simple menu… rice in the brown bowls, and 5 kilos of Singapore style pepper and turmeric crab. You need the platters to have enough space to deal with the crabs! The red bowls are for the shells. I am not posting the recipe because I wasn’t totally thrilled with this experiment. They were good, but not very good…

Served with the crabs, in Singaporean style, a homemade and sweetened iced tea to temper the heat of several tablespoons worth of crushed black peppercorns…

And with another say 2 dozen roses, The Kid crafted a small arrangement done with oasis inside a silk covered box, that she wanted to take to someone who was in the hospital who had just given birth…

Wrapped up in clear floral cellophane and a nice red grosgrain ribbon, it was small but stunning… the perfect size for a small side table in a hospital room…