Cooking for a Dinner Party Together: When Friends Reunite | Our Best Bites of the Week

Sonya Sanford (0:01)

Welcome to Food Friends, a podcast inspiring home cooks to try new dishes in the kitchen by sharing trusted recipes, tips, and friendship. Hi, I'm Sonya.

Kari Lauritzen (0:13)

And I'm Kari. We met in Los Angeles over 15 years ago as personal chefs, and haven't stopped talking about food since. We're so glad you're here.

Hi, Sonya. Hi, Kari. Sonya, what was your best bite this week?

Sonya Sanford (0:29)

Kari, I think you know, because my best bite was our shared best bites. We had a visit. I came to see you very, very briefly. Sorry, all my LA friends that I didn't see. I came down for the briefest amount of time for a very special reason.

Kari Lauritzen (0:42)

Yeah. So a few months ago, I received a message from a colleague of my husband's, and she had been listening to our podcast. She is a fan, and she suddenly realized that I was connected to my husband. So she left a message for him saying, oh, I love your wife's podcast. I love her friendship with Sonya, and it's really fabulous.

Sonya Sanford (1:02)

I think it's important to note, she'd been listening for a while, and because you and your husband have different last names, she didn't automatically know Kari as James' wife. You told me about it, and I was like, oh, Kari, are you going to have them over for dinner?

Kari Lauritzen (1:17)

Yes, and the story got really even more interesting because she found out about the podcast from her sister, who actually found out about the podcast from a former client of mine. And so it was really this fun game of telephone and kind of discovering where did the story start and where did the story end. What happened was, yes, I did invite her to dinner and I said, please bring your sister. And then once we started talking about that, then you and I were like, well, you should calm down and we should cook together because it really is about the two of us.

Sonya Sanford (1:50)

Yeah, I mean, there were a couple reasons. One, I was long overdue for a visit. It's so important to spend time together in person.

Zoom and remote video is just not the same as being with someone in person. It just isn't. Having time to linger in your kitchen and be with you is a very, very different experience than even sitting down every week to talk to you on this podcast or on the phone. So it was kind of a good motivator being like, it's time for a visit. I really need some quality time with Kari. And I get this added bonus of cooking an incredible meal for you and meeting some of your new friends. But then we also found out that the sister who had initially found the podcast actually knows both my husband and my father-in-law and had worked for my father-in-law way back in the day and had even house sat for my father-in-law and knew my husband when he was in high school. So it was a crazy series of connections that were also heartwarming.

Kari Lauritzen (2:45)

It really felt kismet in so many ways. And for me, what it really brought was you back to Los Angeles and the two of us back into a kitchen, which this time happened to be my kitchen. It was wonderful to be in person with you. And also, when I cook with you, my food is so much better. And my husband said for days afterwards, he was like, God, that dinner was just so good. It was just really so good. And I was like, I know, because the two of us together are better than each of us separately.

Sonya Sanford (3:12)

When you can collaborate, there's something that is just wholly different than doing something on your own. There's a magic to that. And it makes the process of cooking better, the fun of cooking better, which I think when you're having fun, you're having a good time, then naturally even the food improves because everything is so joyful. So we should share about the menu because you and I actually, before I came down, had a meeting about this menu.

Kari Lauritzen (3:37)

Once you booked your ticket and we decided like, we need to have a meeting and talk about what we wanna cook because we really do want the menu to reflect our podcast.

Sonya Sanford (3:46)

And like when we did our live Zoom with our paid Substack community, we actually asked them to in preparation for planning this menu, if we were to come to your house for dinner and cook, is there anything that you would request? Because you and I were both a little stump. When you're hosting a dinner party, one of the philosophies we both share is it's not usually a time to experiment with something very new and complicated. And we're also thinking about the balance of dishes, richness and lightness, what are the dietary constraints? We're also thinking about things that can be made ahead of time, so you're not hovering over the stove for an hour while your guests are enjoying appetizers. And when we sat down to really talk about it, you and I share so many philosophies, we could kind of jump into what is a meal that tells the story of our friendship?