Learning to Host

I have been completely intimidated by the idea of having people over for dinner.

For me it was a struggle to not feel like my worth was found in how well I can cook.  I am learning how to balance being hospitable and a blessing, without my motivation being to impress in hopes people will like me.

I started out the week with an extravagant meal idea... that I had never even near cooked before.  Maybe at some point its great to try new recipes with friends, but when I don't even know the basics--probably not.

Here is the link to what I actually made:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/baked-ziti-ii/detail.aspx

 Our menu was:
-Salad with cranberries and sun flower seeds
-Baked Ziti
-Garlic Bread
-Left over top layer of our wedding cake :)

Everyone loves Italian food, plus if we did not have help eating our wedding cake, I would have taken the entire thing down.

It turned out amazing and since I had made it before, I knew I would be successful with the added bonus of it tasting good.

While it turned out great, I did have a hiccup in the midst of making the Baked Ziti.  I was all into mixing my ingredients before really reading the instructions.  After I had plopped the whole thing in the pan, I read "lightly grease the pan". Lovely.  Since I am a rule follower, I proceeded to dump the whole thing back into the bowl, wash the pan, dry the pan, spray the pan, and transfer the whole thing back into my nicely greased pan.

In the end, we had lots of fun eating, drinking, and playing games with our almost new neighbors.

I learned the whole reason we did this in the first place was to connect with friends.  Being a blessing by serving our friends good food is definitely important, but our first priority was to deepen a friendship.  Maybe that is a key to being hospitable...