Last Saturday, Mr. W and I attended our first Progressive Dinner. Commenter Maggie is on the board of a community service organization called the Skills Foundation, which raises money and sponsors afterschool programs for kids and teens to further their educations, prevent drug abuse, teach them life skills. So here’s how the dinner works:
All the people attending the event meet at a restaurant, check in, receive color wristbands to split into two groups. Each group then hits up a series of local participating restaurants and other business establishments on a schedule, eating appetizers at one, main course at another, side dishes at the next, on and on until we end with coffee and dessert at a final meeting place for the two groups to re-converge. All the restaurants donate their one or few dishes, get people to try out their food and maybe come back, and participate in a good cause. The diners’ $50 ticket goes completely to the Foundation. Since this took place in the Uptown Whittier area, we were very excited for good food.

For Mr. W and myself, we started the evening at Maggie and her hubby’s house. I got out of the car and looked ponderingly at a sign on their fence that said “wolf xing” or something like that. Since the decor of the yard seemed very Native American, I just figured it was a fun sign. And then, barks filled the air and a silver wolf approached me from the backyard, humming a low warning growl. A brown similarly-sized dog followed the wolf, also growling. I stood still and kept my hands to myself to show that I’m not a threat. The two canines calmed down enough after inspecting me and Mr. W (who stood behind me, the wimp) to stop growling, just sniffing curiously. I slowly offered my hand to the wolf. She sniffed it, the dog sniffed it, and seemed okay. Right around then, Maggie came running around the back saying, “The dogs! I forgot about the dogs!” That wasn’t comforting, considering the main reason I didn’t jump back into the car and slam the door in horror was that I assumed Maggie wouldn’t leave the dogs loose knowing we were coming over unless she knew they weren’t going to eat us. But by then, I was already friends with the animals, and the raised line of silver fur down the back of the wolf was already smoothing down. We then got a tour of the gargantuan outdoor property and its many fruit and veggie growths (with the two happy dogs bounding beside us, Maggie playing fetch with Kenai, the half-wolf, with a dropped avocado) and then a tour of the renovated house. Maggie’s hubby Tom is quite the visionary architect and do-if-yourselfer.

And THEN we started our tour de force with food. We ate and drank our way through appetizers at Sage Restaurant and Lounge; a ballroom called RMH Dance Center that had bacon-wrapped stuffed dates and fancy mac-and-cheese catered from the restaurant Phlight next door (where we ordered “wine flights” that had nearly full pours); healthy sandwiches at a deli called Fenix 5-4; pitas, hummus, roasted red pepper dip and cucumber yogurt dip, chicken and beef skewers at Uptown Kabob; and ended with champagne, coffee, and cupcakes hosted at the Bluebird Art House. At Uptown Kabob, we were already overfull and Maggie’s husband Tom wandered unenthusiastically to our table and blew his cheeks into big bubbles as he looked at me, alluding to the overabundance of good food. I laughed. He turned and looked at the growing crowd of guests at the table grabbing mediterranean food. “I guess I’d better get in line,” he said flatly, “Or I might starve to death.” It might’ve been the Armenian coffee I was drinking at the moment, but that was the funniest thing I’d heard all night. (That demitasse of Armenian coffee kept me up all night, btw.) My stomach was so distended by the time we got to champagne and cupcake that I attempted to try on some cute tops at the vintage shop attached to Bluebird Art House, but I barely fit in them.

I bought one anyway because it was too cute to pass up. I guess I’ll just have to work my way into that top. The rest of the night, though, I was gasping for air and wondering whether pregnancy would be this painful given the stretching at the same area.

Maggie took this photo at the second location, the bacon- and mac-and-cheese serving ballroom. Also, where we all ordered flights of wine only to be surprised that the pours were nearly full 5-oz pours instead of the normal 1.5 oz tasting pour.

Maggie thought it was blurry, so she tried again.

She started wondering if maybe it wasn’t blurry and she was just wine-goggled. Haha! But then hubby took this and it came out the same, so whatever the issue was, was contagious.

It was a lot of food and our conscience was also appeased knowing we were helping kids in the Whittier area. AND…I met a WOLF! That made my week. =)