A Cook-it-Yourself Dinner Party

By Sandy Hu

My friend from Alaska, Mary Deming Barber, was coming to San Francisco for a conference and I was looking forward to inviting her to dinner. Problem was, I myself was returning from another conference in St. Louis the night before our get-together. So, rather than cook for Mary, I invited her and four of her friends attending the conference to cook dinner with me.

I’d never done this before, but having such a large, open kitchen, it had always been my dream to host a cook-together party. I thought it would be really fun, a great icebreaker among new friends and less work. (Two of the three turned out to be true – guess which?)

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The Last Big Holiday Party, Ever

By Sandy Hu

Steve and I have had a tradition of hosting an annual holiday party from our days as newlyweds living on West 14th Street in New York City. We would serve a collection of hors d’oeuvres with wine, ensuring there was enough food so guests could linger through the night and make dinner of it, or just drop by for a drink while doing the rounds of holiday merrymaking. The crowd then was mostly magazine people and accountants from Price Waterhouse, representing our two careers.

We continued the tradition when we moved to a condominium in Waikiki. At that stage in our life, the guests included family living in Honolulu, newspaper people and more Price Waterhouse accountants.

By the time we moved to San Francisco and restarted the party tradition, we had two children so the mix of guests now revolved around PR people from the agency where I worked, people from high-tech startups where Steve worked and fellow parents from the French American International School.

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