We always rotate through which family is hosting dinner each day. There were some staples like my Aunt Julie's pasta, Aunt Tara's tacos, or Turkey London Broil at my parents', but there has only been one constant that is always present: s’mores.

Now, my family is competitive, type A, and vocal. From woods bike races to Survivor to muck-grabbing from the bottom of the lake (reigning champion here), everything is about who does it best. Nothing quite hits the same as toasting marshmallows. The perfect golden-brown marshmallow is an art: you have to wait until the fire burns down to bright red embers, hold your marshmallow at the perfect distance away, and slowly rotate it rotisserie-style until it's puffed, golden brown completely all over, almost-liquified in the center, and, if you're at expert level, drooping off of the stick to the point of almost losing it all.

The key to this is patience. I'm not sure if it was our parents’ way of keeping us still for a little while, but my (18) cousins and I would be locked in to making s'mores every year.

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Cue my shock and horror when I first went to my now-husband’s grandparents’ house in upstate New York and everyone was toasting their marshmallows by sticking them right into the flames to set them on fire. The audacity! The texture would be all wrong, with a still “raw” firm marshmallow in the center and incinerated crust! I told him that he could not do it like that in front of my family or he'd be humiliated.

It's now however many years later, and my husband was sitting around the fire with my cousins, toasting his marshmallow in the flames in peace. It didn't have to be perfect, especially since that's how he enjoyed it.

In the same way, wine pairing doesn't have to be “perfect” to still be enjoyable. Sure, there are some guidelines for structure and balance that we'll get into later, but there’s a piece sometimes missing from pairings that I've only recently realized: fun. It's easy to fall into the trap that you can only enjoy certain foods with certain wines because it's the “best” pairing. But these can easily lack the whimsy and fun that's meant to be enjoyed with wine. Memories of past dinners, visits to regions, a wine you shared with a friend - all of these can be reasons to pick one bottle over another for a pairing. For me, my favorite pairing isn't technically the “best.” I know there's wines that would work better with s'mores on paper. But I love s’mores and Lambrusco together.

Lambrusco is a sparkling red wine from Italy (specifically Emilia-Romagna and Lombardy) that fell into a bad reputation for being sickly-sweet after one producer’s style choice became the most popular and profitable. Nowadays, it ranges in style from dry to sweet, with notes of wild strawberry and cranberry to even mushrooms and flowers with pleasant minerality. I first learned about it in college and have loved telling more people about this unique wine.

Does Lambrusco “work” with s’mores? Absolutely: the red fruit notes complement the chocolate and sweetness in the sweeter styles match the sweetness of the marshmallow. Is it perfect? No. But there's an inherent fun to sipping on this niche bubbling Italian wine with the flavor of summer in one of my favorite places in the world. And to me, that's the best kind of pairing.

It’s a rare thing then to have a “slow” weekend at home. But even still, I get the bug of wanting to see people. I get to work from home most of the time, but that means that social interactions are pretty limited. Just this past weekend, I sent out a text to neighbors we haven’t seen in a while:

“Hey!! Any chance you guys are free on Saturday?”

We’ve been like ships passing in the night with these friends where one of us is almost always out of town. The last series of texts was the same thing of trying to do a last-minute get together.

“This keeps happening! We’ll be out of state for a wedding all weekend.”

I didn’t let this deter me from seeing them. Instead of saying “darn, we’ll have to pick another date!” like I did the last time, I sent a specific follow-up:

“What about the last two weekends in August?”

It’s so easy to say “we should hang out soon” and not pick a date. I’m very guilty of this myself! You don’t want to seem too eager or type-A that you’re actually putting it on the calendar. But people are busy and have lots of moving pieces in their lives. Even Ina said “We don’t say, ‘Let’s get together’ and then not pick a date.”

I have other friends that I do a quarterly dinner with, as hilariously business-y as that sounds. But you know what that means? We have a 3-month timeframe to make it work, and (except for a few months because of some extra circumstances) we’ve kept it going for almost two years now.

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You might be thinking at this point that I’ve done a bait-and-switch with this article, as I’m talking about making plans months in advance. But here we go:

There are two kinds of invites, and both are needed.

Sometimes, you need to do the months-out planning. There are different phases of life that just are busier than others, different seasons of the year, different reasons why it’s harder to see people. But there’s also the glimmers and a special place in my heart for the last-minute get-together.

Those neighbors were busy on Saturday, but I didn’t let that stop me from getting to see people. I texted another group of friends who we hadn’t seen in a while and we actually hadn’t had over before:

“Hey!! Any chance you guys are free on Saturday?”

This time, most of the group was available! We picked a time for “linner” that was flexible between nap schedules, and I pulled together an easy menu that was mostly prepped in advance. We ate bruschetta off of the teacup saucers from our plate set and dessert off of paper plates since I hadn’t run the dishwasher. I pulled a mis-mash of beers together and made a strawberry lemon-limeade from what we had in the fridge. They both asked what they could bring and we ended up with a smorgasburg of desserts that was laughably abundant for just 6 people.

All that to say that it wasn’t a picture-perfect dinner party with flowers and place settings. It was relaxed, impromptu, and, most importantly, fun. And it happened because I took the risk of rejection that they might be busy, but thankfully they happened to be free.

This is your sign to send the last-minute invite, pick an actual date in advance if needed, and keep at it if you want to have people over.

My family is anything but small. I’m one of 18 first cousins on one side and 11 on the other (with 5 overlapping, but that’s a story for another time). Every holiday was a big celebration with folding tables and chairs spilling from room to room. I married into a big, boisterous family: my now-husband and I had to make spreadsheets in the beginning to understand who was who in each other’s families. Needless to say, “intimate gatherings” aren’t the standard.

I’m sure my parents didn’t throw parties any more frequently than the next couple, but I remember them as such spectacular events. There was fun music, delicious food, so many people, and, most notably, laugher. I have such strong memories of being upstairs in my bedroom (since it was a grown-up party) and listening to my house being filled with laughs. I remember my neighbor playing our out-of-tune piano to boisterous applause and wishing I could be down there enjoying it all. I couldn’t wait to be old enough to be at those parties and to eventually host them myself.

Now that I’m an adult, I haven’t been to a cocktail party like I remember my parents throwing. Yes, there have been house parties and dinner parties, but there’s something about the cocktail party that’s special.

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For hosting a dinner party, you need to have enough seats for people to actually eat the dinner. Add on the expense of cooking the main course (even if you do a potluck), and suddenly what started as a fun Friday night idea seems like a chore. Then, there’s the house party: people packed in, lots of drinks, and loud music, but also smaller groups where you have to yell, warm rooms, and not usually any food.

Enter: the cocktail party. A curated guest list, small bites packed with flavor, fun music that sets the tone but doesn’t overwhelm it, and whatever drinks you feel like serving.

For my 30th birthday, I threw the sparkling wine-themed cocktail party of my dreams. I kept the bar simple: 6 different styles of sparkling wine from around the world. I wrote up little descriptions for each one so that everyone could know something about what they were drinking (and hopefully find a new favorite). My sister made French 75 glitter jello shots to tie in with the sparkle theme. I crafted a menu of both homemade and store-bought appetizers that overflowed our dining room table. My mom bought a blank white sheet cake that served as a “guest book” for people to sign and decorate. I created a playlist of my favorite artists, but that wasn’t the soundtrack of the evening.

It was adults laughing.

And this time, I was finally downstairs.

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