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I don't know how it happens that I make a plan to do something, consider all the steps, and allow a reasonable amount of time to complete them all. And then, interruptions appear in my schedule that take up just enough of that time to make sure I will not complete this task in a calm, easy-going fashion, but will have to rush around like a mad thing instead. It never fails.

In this case, the plan was something simple and pleasant: have Dr. Nurse and Dr. Music over for dinner tonight, and serve a Greek-themed dinner featuring moussaka, green beans in tomato sauce, and horiatiki, aka Greek salad. Well, roadblock #1 was the fact that all my eggplants went mushy. So I had to run back to the store yesterday and get more eggplants and some other necessary items. Yesterday, I sliced, salted, and drained the eggplant and fried them till golden brown. I also made the meat sauce. This morning, I boiled the potatoes in their jackets, and made a Reine de Saba cake from the recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It's one of those fiddly cakes that requires beating the egg whites until stiff (them, not me) and then gently folding all the other stuff. You end up with a single layer of rich and somewhat moist chocolate almond cake. Then a bunch more stuff happened. And then, between four and six, I sliced the potatoes and layered them with the eggplant and the meat sauce. I made a bechamel--yay! It was the first time I ever did that. It's one of those things you have to whisk like mad until it is "like a thick custard." Well, who the heck knows how thick is a thick custard?? You squint at it dubiously, then whisk some more. But it came out very nicely in the end, and was spread over the top of the assembled moussaka, and it looked great. Okay, into the oven for an hour while I madly snap a big pile of green beans. More onion, garlic and tomatoes sauteed in olive oil, then add the green beans, put the lid on and let it simmer until done.

Oof, it was almost time for our guests to arrive! I cut up the cucumber, tomatoes, red onion, and green pepper into big bright chunks, and threw in olives and dressing. I melted the chocolate and stirred in the butter for glace au chocolate, cooled it over ice water, and spread it on the cake. Done! When we sat down together, Dr. Music murmured, as if to himself, "What a beautiful dinner!" Be still my heart. This is what the cook likes to hear. He meant it literally--that it was pretty. And it was. The vegetables were all colorful and appealing in this season of snow, and the moussaka with its top layer of delicately browned bechamel was a pleasant sight as well. They are charming guests, and we had fun talking as well as eating. I'm not sure whether to tell my brother he seriously missed out on that moussaka. The leftovers were divvied up, and the guests took some home. But if I make one for him, it will be my second instead of my first, so it will probably be even better.

In other news today, the Sparrowhawk booked our flights for this cruise down the Rhine that Queenie and I decided we should all take, back in the dark days of 2020 when we needed something to look forward to. It may actually happen! That's the good news. The bad news is that, as we were putting the remnants of dinner away, we realized that the refrigerator wasn't cooling any more. Oy. We put ice packs in it, put the meat items on the back porch, where it is well below freezing, and called the repair person. I hope we don't have to buy a new one, because they're hard to get these days.