Sukkot cooking

[magid]

I have friends who are incredibly impressive hosts. Whenever I go over for a meal, not only is the food exquisite, but beautifully plated as well. I tend to be intimidated by the thought of having them over. However, they do not have a sukkah. I do. So they're coming to dinner, and I'm in even more of a tizzy than usual. I still have to straight up the apartment, set up the light in the sukkah, get the hot plate and hot water urn plugged in.

And finish the cooking. This is the current menu:

• challah
  
• wine (another source of stress; they're oenephiles, I'm plebian)
  
• split pea soup with barley, onion, and sweet potato
  
• salmon fillet marinated in orange juice, maple syrup, and cayenne, and then roasted
  
• cranberry-orange sauce
  
• rice with chickpeas and carrots
  
• winter squash (perhaps turned into a kugel)
  
• apple 'strudel' - I cooked cinnamon dried apple slices with apple juice, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and raisins, then will fold that into some puff pastry, hopefully doing an artful weaving of dough across the top, and baked
  
• chickpea flour cookies
  
• toasted pumpkin seeds
  
• medjool dates
  
• perhaps some nuts
  
• tea

It should be enough for seven. Well, and I'd like leftovers, to help through the rest of yom tov. Still, I won't starve :-). I'm still nervous about the things that aren't yet done, that something will happen. And I think that there should be some green vegetable, and there isn't. Etc.

On the bright side, the sun screen with decorations is up (if skew; working alone makes it trickier), and I have seven chairs already in the sukkah, with three little tables interspersed, and three lanterns ready to go out as well, in addition to the one electric light on a timer.