Another celebration

Yesterday, we celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary with some friends. Here you can see how I had dressed my tabe. You'd like to know the "ingredients"?
I wanted a well dressed table so I chose a linen and cotton Jacquard Francais pink tablecloth with its beautiful napkins (a Christmas gift of my good friend Elizabeth). This tablecloth is the perfect match for my art nouveau chinaware.
I deemed my Ercuis stainless steel silverware was not fancy enough, so I took my Aria Christophle silver ware out of the boxes, one by one.
The knives rested on my usual knife stands, that is a chopstick stand. I chose the blue and pink Chinese mini-pillows.
Next came the choice of glasses. I opted for two sizes of my Crystal de Sevres "Primavera" glasses plus small pink mouth blown tumblers specially made for me in Tunisia, for water.
I used additional silver plates to rest the crystal water carrafe and the wine bottles and corks.
The table looked very nice indeed.

And the menu?
Once Elizabeth, Heide, Janqueline, Bernard and Jean had arrived, at 8:30, we served a Red Cremant de Loire from Domaine Sanzay to set the mood. This ruby color sparkling wine from the Loire is made with cabernet franc grapes and I love to serve it in summer.

My appetizer was a home made duck terrine. I made one for my birthday last March, but the guests were not the same and this terrine is a beautiful serving piece! I served it with country bread and two differnet chutneys.

The entree was a large veal roast with a light creamy sauce; with a garnish of red glazed carrots.

I had been to my favortie cheese shop on rue d'Auteuil: La fromagerie d'Auteuil where Mr Fouchereau advised on a special whole cheese made by Cistercien monks in Burgundy, the cheese from Citeaux Abbey . Its a non-pasteurized cow milk cheese, made with the milk of Montebliard cows from the Abbey. It is aged for at least 3 weeks, and it's creamy and mild.

Finally, I served my hazlenut tart for dessert.

Throughout the meal we had Saumur-Champigny wine and Chateau Haut Mongeat Bordeaux wine.

Ah, yes, and coffee after dessert.