My first home was a small 1920s cottage in the canyons of Los Angeles. It was in the same hills as Dodger Stadium, where we could sometimes hear the roar of the crowd at night and where hawks and coyotes roamed during the day. It had a small kitchen and dining room, which I filled with an antique sideboard and table, and a living room you stepped down into with a large, oval Spanish-style window that gave a picturesque view of the lush canyon.

It was a dramatic change for me, having grown up in a three-family house on a concrete street in New Jersey where my working-class mother, father, brother and I shared one floor the size of a one-bedroom apartment. Yet I remember my mother hosting dress-up cocktail parties in that tiny place, using silver drink shakers and crystal stemware for her whiskey sours and old fashioneds, which she garnished with orange slices and sweet maraschino cherries. (I would sometimes sneak a bite of one.) 

Perhaps I carried that early memory of home entertaining to that L.A. cottage where I hosted my first dinner parties. I was a young married woman covering criminal courts for The Associated Press. My then-husband was a newspaper editor, so we had many interesting people in our lives, often up-and-coming writers sprinkled in with some young Hollywood hopeful types. 

One of my parties was with journalists from the Los Angeles Times and other reporters who covered crime. I was a vegetarian back then, and I would make a complex (and carb-loaded) pizza rustica from “The Vegetarian Epicure” cookbook which took hours to make with its many layers and double crust, complemented with a pasta dish, salad and wine. We talked and drank wine into the night, having great discussions and laughing. 

Another memorable dinner party I had was with the Hollywood types — young screenwriters hoping to make it big. My former husband was on a celebrity softball team that included the head of NBC studios and the creator of “The X-Files” TV series. One of those aspiring screenwriters brought an actress with him, Catherine Hicks, who starred in the “Seventh Heaven” TV series and also had an Emmy-nominated role playing Marilyn Monroe in a made-for-TV movie. This young hostess made the foolish mistake of retreating to the kitchen to get a start on the dishes and missed Hicks’ story of what it was like to play Marilyn. I learned the hard way to stay at the table and enjoy your guests. The dishes can wait.

A dinner party is not the same as inviting someone over for a barbecue. It has a certain salon-like distinction to it where the food and conversation are equally important. When I asked around about who does great dinner parties in Sacramento, two women were mentioned: Mary Daffin and Peg Tomlinson-Poswall. 

“It’s an opportunity to see people in your home environment,” says Daffin, a manager at The Jacquelyn social club. “You get to share the love of cooking, hospitality, and they get to see you for who you are.” 

She sends out formal, sometimes handwritten invitations so her guests know it’s something special. She limits the guest list to eight and likes to invite people from different backgrounds to keep it interesting. Her husband was raised in New Orleans from a line of chefs, so he does Creole cooking and tries to prepare as much in advance as possible. She starts with appetizers in the kitchen, then moves to the dining room for a dinner such as shrimp and grits accompanied by steak with lump crab meat, then relaxing in the living room with coffee, dessert and brandy.

Peg Tomlinson-Poswall is a former caterer and restaurant owner who hosts dinner parties with her retired attorney husband John. She, too, was inspired by her mother, who hosted dinners on hand-embroidered tablecloths with handwritten name tags. 

“I love Mexican food. I’ve been to Mexico a ton of times, and sometimes I’ll do an all-Mexican menu, and I have Mexican plates and tablecloths. My husband’s half Indian. And sometimes I’ll do an Indian dinner, and I have saris to put on the table and some special plates for that. It just depends upon whatever I feel like cooking,” Tomlinson says.

I remember one fateful day where I accidentally slept in until noon the day I was hosting a dinner party. I was frantic.

“My standard rule is everything has to be done before people get here. I set the table the day before. I don’t want somebody walking into a messy kitchen with dishes piled up, because it makes them uneasy. It makes them feel like they have to jump in and help you,” Tomlinson-Poswall says.

So what makes dinner parties special? 

“A dinner party, to me, is putting people around a table and feeding them and nourishing them and having great conversations and lingering over the table and connecting,” Tomlinson-Poswall says. “Food is universal. It’s what connects all of us, no matter what country you go to, once you sit at the table.”

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