There are those weekends that are meant for shopping. Then there are those other weekends that are meant to just hang out, in the sunshine, at the beach or at the Pile place market, sampling food from all the tiny holes in the wall and clicking pictures of every little thing that catches the eye. And then, there are those other weekends that are solely meant for guests. Entertaining guests. And the last weekend was one such weekend. The whole week was spent in cleaning the huge monstrous house. No, I take that back. I love my house. So, I'll call it the huge lovely house. Then the menu was planned and lists of things to buy were made. Thursday was devoted to shopping for the said things. And Friday the marathon started.

I had invited K for lunch at noon. Just me and her. I made Pav bhaji and kande batate pohe. For dessert, she sampled the Jamun and little bit of the pista roll. She brought me a lovely gift from Lebanon. A pen holder stuffed with Malban. I was so excited! It has been so long since a friend has given me a gift. Of course I don't have any real friends now, where I live. And I in turn gave her the rose syrup that I had specially got for her from India. Boy, was she thrilled!We chatted about everything from work to interviews to her car pool buddy to the light rail system to holidaying in the Mediterranean. Wow...maybe we should do this more often.

Friday evening, P & S came over. We had planned a cook and eat biriyani night. P is a champ in making Hyderabadi Biriyani and we just decided to get together and cook and have fun. And, we made Mirch Ka Salan too. I finally learnt how to make the awesome biriyani and it is not that tough! The guys volunteered to make the Dessert -Icream Sundae : fruits, honey, nuts and Vanilla ice cream.

Saturday, we took a break and headed to IKEA. A won a free lunch at Punjab Sweets and so we hand lunch there. It was a great day and the plan was to go to Alki Beach in the evening, but it got really late and we had to do other groceries for the next week. We got back home and watched We are family. And dinner was the left over Biriyani.

On sunday, E and his mom came for lunch. I made veggie puffs and kande batate poha for them. Pav bhaji was already made. The lunch was great. They totally loved it. A made the ice cream sundae, this time just rose syrup, honey and nuts on vanilla ice cream. It was fantastic!

Now, tell me, don't I deserve that week long vacation on Amalfi coast?