I love tasking. And I was in the middle of a personal "task-a-week" challenge with myself, but I hadn't had a moment to consider what my next task might be. Saturday morning, cup of tea in hand, I stumbled over this task. Only one other completion? This task cried out for company. And so I decided that I would serve dinner in the dark.

The first concern was the menu. Not every food would work in the dark: anything requiring silverware, for example, might lead to disaster. So finger food it was.

I worked out a menu ( see photos for full list), and considered going to the grocery store before anyone else woke up. After all, darkness could also mean that those eating have no idea what they are eating... This became part of my challenge. I arranged to go to the grocery store with one of my roommates, and we performed a complicated ballet of grocery shopping where he was not allowed to see what I was getting.

Then, preparations started. I drafted my sister to help, because I needed the extra hands. We banished everyone else to the living room while we cooked, and then covered the windows with black plastic sheeting. We have a streetlight near us, and even after dark, some light comes in. So, in order to get a blackout, we covered everything. Doors, windows, the light on the microwave. We turned off all the lights, and waited, looking for light. Find some? Grab the tape, and the plastic, and cover it. Rinse, and repeat, again and again until I can't see my hand in front of my face.

Turn back on the light, and set the table. Set the food up by courses, so that I can serve each one separately. Practice walking back and forth to the table with my eyes closed. Turn off all but one light, and escort our guests to their seats with their eyes closed.

Set up the camera to video the event. Discover that the video camera has three display lights. Cover the whole thing with the last of the black plastic*.

Serving food with no light is really hard. If I ever wanted to do this again, I would invest in a pair of night vision goggles, because finding the table with food in my hands is a non-trivial problem. It turned out, however, that one of our guests have MUCH better night vision that I or my sister, and could actually slightly see. Which was good, because right around the sandwich course, I lost the table, found it with some coaching, and then knocked over a cup, spilling juice all over the place. HINT: use sippy cups, if you decide to do this. She-of-the-excellent-night-vision cleaned things up. At least I had thought ahead enough to put out lots of napkins!

I had made far more food that we were able to eat! The novelty of eating dinner entirely with one's hands, and in the dark wore off pretty quickly, and the annoyance of not being able to see what one was eating led to some fun conversations.

But we had done it! I had served a meal in complete (to me, and two other guests, at least) darkness. In addition, two of the guests had no idea what they would be eating before it was served to them, so that kept them "in the dark" as well.


*Later, I discovered that this made the recording un-useable through a trick of the sound reflecting in the plastic and generating a crinkly blur over everything.