The Awaiting Table’s 4th Birthday Party, September 9th, 2007.

1)It was nearing midnight and the massive sheet of marble was stilling leaning against the wall, the four table legs still grouped like campfire logs on the stable floor and three walls of the house still tacky to the touch with thinner-based paint. ‘We open in 10 hours, we still can’t figure out to mount the table legs or how to stop the burners from falling through the hole in the marble table top once we do, which means we are, in effect, about to open a cooking school and we don’t even have a stove’. It was my best friend and business partner, his eyes swollen and pink from exhaustion, and probably too, the smell of me.

2)That night we took turns packing the espresso percolator every few hours, bringing it to a boil on the upturned travel iron. Eventually the table came together around 5 am. At 6, we had mounted the burner down into the marble and walking through the house with a kilo of sizzling garlic in sauté pan took care of most of the foul smells. A couple of showers did the rest. ‘We’re just happy that you’re here’ was the only response I could think of when our first guests asked us why we were opening a big dusty bottle of champagne, their first night of their course. They left never knowing they entered our ledger as ‘guest 001’ and ‘guest 002’, and anyway, in time the rings under our eyes faded as well.

3)It’s probably normal to turn introspective when contemplating any anniversary but, looking back, I think the most surprising element to our school celebrating our 4th birthday is how little of that ‘let’s- put-on-a-show-in-the barn feeling has faded. We still feel it every day.

One day the school’s phone will ring with our butcher excited that he just shot a wild hare and would we like that instead the lamb we ordered tonight? (We braised it with fresh thyme and green olives and it was superb). Or I’ll find the special rennet I’ve been hunting down for months and we‘ll work a little fresh cheese-making into Friday morning (we sweetened half of it and made a lemon tart, salted the other half and used it to pinken our spicy tomato and sausage sauce that we served over our home-made cavatelli).

Or Bob and Jackie from NYC will write and ask if we can do something for their niece’s sweet 16 (We searched itunes for her favourite bands and then the night of her party we decorated the dinning room with 200 white candles in brass candle sticks).

Maybe Simon, the South-African-turned-Canadian Psychiatrist, will express an interest in region’s world- famous rosatos (the local rosè wines) and we will work in a comparative tasting Tuesday night (we tried 6: his preference, a pink, bone-dry salice salentino from Calò).

Or an event like The World Cup will dictate that we move dinner to the living room so we could watch the match on the television we bought just for the occasion.

When a dinky, local religious parade blatted flat trumpets so loud that we stopped cooking and fell in behind the crowd, it was our seven aprons that somehow stood out even more than the shouldered statues of bleeding saints.

Each of those events was nearly magical, yet we couldn't have planned it even if we had wanted to.

Every Sunday night during the welcoming dinner I always find myself saying, Well this week is going to be interesting because there is a local x or because y is coming by and just published his new cookery book or a friend is celebrating her z and asked if we didn’t want to come along, etc.

The delighted faces always tell me two things: that they are indeed interested in our little-show-put-on-in-the-barn, and two, that the look of excitment on their faces is actually mirroring my own, and that I just can't see myself when I say such things.

No two weeks are ever the same, and going on four years into this thing, that doesn’t seem likely to change anytime soon.