I don’t like to call it a ‘dinner party’ because that sounds stressful.  But just dinner?  I can handle regular dinner.  Even if I’m cooking for six, not my normal two.

On the menu for tonight’s non-‘dinner party’ party:

Vegetable quinoa

Tofu

Roasted potatoes

Roasted Brussel sprouts

Salad with almonds, cranberries, and goat cheese

Amazingly, the entire meal took me only 45 minutes from start to finish.  I mean – I destroyed my kitchen in the process, but at least I wasn’t slaving over the stove.

The easy entrée is what made all the difference in the time prep – I cooked tri-color quinoa and then combined it with carrots, canned corn, chickpeas, English peas, and an entire bottle of red wine and oil olive salad dressing.  Ready in a blink of an eye.

Really, the tofu was intended to be mixed in, but a few of my guests aren’t fans, so I kept it to the side.

Simple salad with goat cheese to add, if guests wanted to:

And the roasted veggies completed the meal.

All together now:

After the meal, my friend Heather whipped out a personality quiz book called The Wisdom of the Enneagram.  It started off with two simple questions, the answers to which determined your basic personality type.  Then, there were 15 questions for each personality type to confirm how intensely you conformed to those characteristics. 

There are nine basic personality types (broken down quite neatly on the Wikipedia entry for the book).  When we answered the questions, we all also answered for our spouses to see how well our perceived personality matched up to what others think of us.   

The Husband is a clear Helper: 

• Basic fear = being unloved
• Basic desire = to feel love
• Temptation = denial of own needs, manipulation
• Vice = pride
• Virtue = humility

I was a clear Challenger:

• Basic fear = being harmed or controlled
• Basic desire = self-protection
• Temptation = believing they are entirely self-sufficient
• Vice = lust or forcefulness
• Virtue = Innocence

The whole discussion was really interesting; if you’re into this type of thing, I would definitely recommend the book.  Plus, it was a fun dinner party game to play with close friends – we laughed a lot about each other’s weird habits (like my fixation with doing laundry every Sunday, no matter what – a clear Challenger personality quirk). 

Hope you had a nice Friday, too!