Pagosha

As I said in my last post, we were the next one to throw "pagosha"(Party after the wedding) for my brother-in-law. My god it was too much work. Persian parties are nothing but too much work for the host especially if you make all the dishes yourself. We should have at least three different foods at the dinner table, lots of Hour d’ouvre and a very fancy desert table. I myself am very picky when arranging parties, I like the house to look very clean and nice and serve the guests in the best way, on the other hand my husband is picky about the amount of food and their varieties, he thinks people have the cow appetite and we should make too much food otherwise we won't have enough food for them!! Every time that we have a party we will have extra food at least for a week to eat but he never gets his lesson. Just imagine with all these conditions plus having a 2-year-old boy at a house, how difficult was it for me last night. We had about 30 guests and I told my husband lets remind people that it is an adult party and ask them not to bring kids (Iranians, mostly take their kids to the parties even the late parties at night!) but as usual he did not listen to me, there were 5 kids and god knows how active they were! I put my son in bed while he was crying and wanted to go down stairs and playing at 9:30. I knew it was impossible to serve the dinner with him. Any way it was too much work and I was very tired and stressed. I had two people to help me with serving food and stuff but still even if you bring the help you need to manage them yourself! The party was fine and I think guests had good time and dinner was tasty too. Me, my Mom and my husband made different foods, so we had three delicious dishes, Gormeh sabzi made by my husband, Zereshk polo and chicken made by me and Baghali polo and lamb shang made by my Mom. The last group of guests left our house at 2:00 am, Can you believe it? Any way I am happy that it is over but as usual my In-laws had attitude, they think what ever we did was our duty I could see it in them, that's the part that made me more tired but it is OK, I did it for my husband because I know how much he likes to have guests and how much he enjoys having people over. I like it too but with baby it is hard for me. Thank god my Mom is here and helps me like an angel. Some times I think it is hard to be an Iranian woman, especially here in California that we have all the customs from Iran and we follow them and at the same time we should work hard as an American woman out side of the house!!