Entertaining Out-of-Town Visitors

Our friends' son, Nicolas, 27, came to visit for two evenings and we needed to figure out how to entertain him. He came to Columbus in between New York City and Chicago, so obviously we were never going to live up to either of those.

The problem is that Columbus' motto is "It's a great place to live, but you wouldn't want to visit."

I had only one secret weapon to make the stay worthwhile -- a 21-year-old daughter. And I do think he enjoyed the stay because he and Grace went out on the town both nights.

During the day on Monday, we ate lunch at Dirty Franks -- it's a hot dog place. We figured that was pretty American. 

We visited an Indian Mound and explained that they dot the countryside around Ohio. Some of them are much more exciting, like Serpent Mound, but is more than an hour away.

I wanted to take Nicolas to a place that no one else would, so I drove to the Field of Corn. Only in Ohio. It's a field with statues of giant corn. I plan to post a panoramic photo on Saturday, so don't miss it.

Next we visited Chief Leatherlips, which is a statue built into the bank of the Scioto River. Chief Leatherlips didn't even do anything that exciting, but he is memorialized here and you can walk on his head. 

The highlight of the day for me, was the soiree we planned that evening. In addition to eating and drinking, my friend Pam busted open the piano and there was singing too. I served goat cheese pasta with shrimp and a green salad. When Nicolas saw the salad dressing, he offered to make a vinaigrette, but I said it was an American meal so he had to eat the bottled salad dressing. I promised that it had no GMOs and only real ingredients without chemical sounding names. 

I was most worried about the wine, but I had a chardonnay from Italy (bought at Trader Joe's for only $4.99 per bottle, don't tell!) and he proclaimed it good wine. 

For dessert, turtle cake with a layer of chocolate cake, a caramel and butter layer, then chocolate chips and another layer of chocolate cake. We had a New York Riesling with dessert.

When everyone left, Grace and Nicolas headed down the street to the local bar again. Apparently he was quite popular there with people buying him shots and guessing where he was from. No one guessed France, although someone guessed Belgium. "How could they guess Belgium and not France?" he raged. "Belgium is so small."

A lovely visit.