After Eights

Some of you will remember me mentioning in another forum that when I was invited to my first dinner party by parishioners, I asked the pastor what he usually brought as a hostess gift. Without hesitation, he replied, "After Eight!" Puzzled, I asked why, and he explained, "They're perfect for something very small after dinner. And they're refreshing!" Just the way he said it cracked me up, and I vowed to get him a box for Christmas.

Lo and behold, he invited me to have dinner with him and another priest I know quite well on Christmas Eve before our day starts in earnest. I had been racking my brain about what to bring for dinner. Flowers seemed too ... girly. The pastor dislikes sweets, so a dessert was out of the question (though I talked him into having a piece of my world famous low-fat carrot cake earlier in the week -- he pointed out, with his skeletal physique, that he doesn't really care about the low-fat part!) and neither he nor the other priest drink so somehow my mind came around to After Eights.

So, Father Pastor will be getting a box of After Eights for his dinner party gift after all. Hopefully he will find them as refreshing as he does when he is on the receiving end as when he is on the giving end.