Food and too much of it!

For a dinner party of 4 adults and three children aged six and three, I could not get Bar which is Sea Bass.  However, a 2kg Norwegian trout was purchased at Intermarche, where the fishmonger explained how to cook it.  She descaled and prepped it.  In future I would ask her to take out the skeleton.  She had suggested that she could!  I would keep the skeleton for stock and stuff the fillets as I did for the whole fish... that way I would not have tricky bones and waste! After the dinner party, I froze some of the flesh as i got tired of eating trout for four days!   I made the debris into fish stock and used some of that as a basis for pea soup!  The rest of the fish stock has been frozen for winter soup!
We were supposed to start with oysters but my friends didn't go to the village and let me know.. Instead they brought smoked salmon on crackers with gravadlax for the aperos.  Nice!  AND they bought bubbly which I had already got but we opened theirs.  I hope I will take mine round to their house.
Then we had slices of finger thick, smoked salmon from a side fillet that I had bought a few weeks ago served with a green salad (rocket, avocado, shallots ( I wanted spring onions!) and asparagus.  I warmed up the salmon so it was cooked and very rich! The photo was blurred so got deleted!
NB That evening I realised the trout was not a good idea because it was almost like Salmon! T
For the main course the trout was served with small roasted potatoes which had been partially cooked in the kettle with the trout, plus grated celeriac and carrot which I had braised in lemon juice, zest and cream in the oven plus green shoots of Romanesco.
We were full. Parents were tired so the lovely Valençay and Gorgonzola cheeses remained untouched.   They chose the home made lemon curd dessert which was layered with crushed speculoos biscuits and plain yoghurt in individual glasses. I'd had desserts like that on Ile de Re so wanted to experiment. I haven't got it quite right. I also followed a recipe for lemon meringue pie / tart which i used to make almost weekly without blinking an eye!!!!!!!
I started it on New Year's Eve... because between the dinner party and NYE I'd made 12 mince pies with my own pastry and jar of 2005 vintage mincemeat! YUM!
The dinner party took me almost two days to clean, lay table prettily, find candles, plates, glasses and prep the food so that when guests arrived I had little to do except get food hot and plated!
C and JC loved the atmosphere with candles in several places and frankincense in the air.
I loved doing it but well out of practice!

It took several days for me to clear up as I have no dishwasher but between so I socialised and did other things!