Today is Sunday, a day for me to be lazy especially considering I worked my patootie off yesterday. I hosted my first (very small) get together! I wanted to take the time to write about what I did to prepare, how I handles some hiccups along the way, and the overall outcome.
- Prepare, prepare, prepare
- Know what you’re going to make and stick to it
- Actually read through the recipes, prepare any seasonings/ pie crusts/ compound butters/ chopped vegetables, take the chicken out the freezer
- When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
- Improvise
- Clean as you go and put things back when you’re done with them
- Use dishes that can be storage containers
- Have drinks/ libations that complement the flavor of the meal
- Have games!
Prepare, prepare, prepare
So, first and foremost, you have to prepare. Know the number of people attending/ who RSVP’d (for my get together there were only two guests), and build your preparations around that number plus extra. Once you know the number of guests, plan a menu that is relatively easy for you to pull off. I’ve made roast potatoes and brussel sprouts before, so those were my side dishes. I wasn’t going to make roasted artichokes and fennel… I have no idea how to work with those; I simply followed the KISS method. Since I knew two guests were arriving, I shopped for four people, though I grossly underestimated how much my friends and I would eat. I definitely wanted leftovers and that didn’t happen. So for my first time hosting, I made the rookie mistake, unbeknownst to me, of trying to purchase, prepare, and cook things the same day of the gathering.
Don’t do that. Just don’t.
No I didn’t buy all the ingredients the day of, but I thought “Eh, I can buy the pie crust later.” “Eh, I can get the cheese from the store down the street.” By the time it my first guest arrived, I was so overwhelmed and I didn’t even get to make the pear tart.
My suggestions: know what it is you’re going to have present for your guests in terms of food and drinks. Have multiple variations the dishes you plan to make in case you’ve forgotten or don’t have an ingredient on hand, and know different dishes that can go well together in case, as I’ve learned, a mishap occurs (such as accidentally burning the dish, or clumsily dropping half of the ingredients). Hosting the first time made me realize that it’s not a good idea to have just enough to make a particular dish because I almost burned the brussel sprouts and wouldn’t have had back up if things went south.
Actually read through the recipes. Just do it. I didn’t and realized that I missed quite a few steps that I needed to do in order to prep the meat from the day before. Chop, dice, marinate, whatever it is, just prep the ingredients at minimum from the night before in order for things go smoothly the day of.
When life gives you lemons, make limoncello
You know how many things went wrong/ not quite right? A lot. But I just went with the flow (and had friends that didn’t care too much about the details, they were just there for the food). The charcuterie board was more of a hassle than an entertaining appetizer, the chicken was slightly overcooked, the damn brussel sprouts took way longer to cut up than I originally thought, and the pear tart, ha! But in the end, the meal actually turned out to be pretty good.
Improvise
This kind of goes in hand with the previous pint but more so if you’ve sent out a menu beforehand like I did, I had to improvise because since the “Fall In Friendship”, I hosted a Friendsgiving in November. I bought 7 russet potatoes and three of them were black in the center and inedible, so I had half the original amount of potatoes and “stretched” the mashed potatoes with plant-based milk and a lot of butter.
Clean as you go
I’m sure this isn’t news to some of you but this is pretty much imperative when cooking to food to host. With making multiple dishes, things will get pretty cluttered, fast. My mind can’t properly funtion if the
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