Have you ever imagined your perfect dinner party? Last night came pretty close.

I’ve been friends with Mollie Katzen for 20 years. I met her when I was working on her book “Still Life with Menu.”  Mollie is almost exactly ten years to the day older than me, and she has always been a creative beacon in my life …(Well, if Mollie has the guts to do x,y,z, then so should I!) She and her friend Robert, a winemaker and beekeeper, made dinner for me and Scott, the documentary film makers Debra Kaufman and her partner Alan Snitow, and Michael Pollan and his wife Judith Belzer. (OK, I was a wee bit impressed with sitting next to Michael, since I write about food too, and he is a  fantastically talented, intelligent and insightful writer).

Though in fact, none of us are vegetarians, we had a full on vegetarian feast — succotash with roasted artichokes, tempeh with pomegranate sauce, a remarkable rice mold with three different preparations, and on and on. The food was so delicious that even Scott ate the tempeh, which is, to say the least, a miracle.

We tasted Robert’s wine, but to me, even more remarkable, was eating honey directly from the honeycomb his bees made that day, from flowers from Tilden Park in Berkeley.

Occasionally, life hands you great gifts. Last night was one of them. The food, the comaraderie, and combined brain and heart trust of last night’s dinner is an experience I will remember for a long time to come.