I think it was already Wednesday when I decided to have a dinner party Friday.

That was last night, when I invited the German organ builders, Hans-Ulrich Erbslöh and Bernd Becker, along with Barry Wenger and Steve Hoover, plus Frank and Sue Haas, who are hosting Hans in their home in Kailua. Barry, as you may remember, is the new organist and choir director of the Lutheran Church of Honolulu and Steve, an organ builder, is in town briefly to meet with Hans and Bernd, before moving to Hawaii.

And why invite them to dinner? Quite honestly, it’s something my husband Carl would have done. He was forever inviting people over to dinner for food and conversation —and I have the guest books to prove it—every time someone comes over for dinner, I have them sign my guest book. I’m now on volume nine!

Even before the pandemic, statistics seem to show that these days, people host gatherings at their homes less and less. According to ApartmentTherapy.com, “Why Doesn’t Anyone Have Parties Anymore?” the amount of high school seniors who have never attended a party has climbed to 41.3 percent, from 11.8 percent in 1987. Some reasons for the decline are that the price of hosting is increasing, apartments are too small and in all honesty, putting on a dinner party is a lot of work. Due to the rise of the internet, cell phones and Zoom meetings, it’s a lot easier to just eschew this kind of activity altogether. Check out “The Death of the Party” at the New York Times. And that was written before the pandemic!

What was kind of fun was that I just discovered the Memories feature of Photos on my iPhone, and I displayed a slideshow on my big screen TV of Hans-Ulrich Erbslöh from throughout the years! I had photos of him and his wife Christiane not only in Hawaii, but also at home in Hamburg, and in Bavaria at Hans’ grandfather’s cabin where my husband Carl and son Stephen and I were privileged to visit in 2012.

We started out with two different kinds of cheese, havarti with dill and brie, with triscuit crackers; a salmon dip which Sue brought, large cocktail shrimp, trail mix with cashews, almonds and dried cranberries and Frank and Sue brought Prosecco to wash it all down.

I then served the dinner buffet style. Recipes for some of the dishes are hyperlinked for all you cooks out there.

The main dish was roasted maple-glazed pork tenderloin, a favorite I’ve made many times before and never have had a failure. The secret is in not overcooking the pork, so that it’s juicy and flavorful.

Sue made the dessert, a lemon and apple tart.

By all accounts it was all a grand success!