Did I panic? Not a chance. First, I knew that I had options. My guests were primarily coming over for the camaraderie, so I could always scrap my entire menu, order a few pizzas, buy a few cases of soda, and we would all still have a great time. Second, I knew that I didn’t have to impress anyone. Only one of my guests was a first time visitor, so it would probably be okay if the house wasn’t perfectly clean – as long as everything was sanitary! And it would probably be okay if I was still fussing in the kitchen when people arrived. Finally, I knew I would be forgiven if I didn’t execute my menu to the letter. My guests would rather that I skip a few menu items in order to be alert, oriented, and social than to work through the night to get everything done and be too exhausted to carry on a coherent conversation. Of course, I have such terrific dinner party guests because anyone who doesn’t meet those standards just isn’t invited back.
The Planning
The first thing I did was assess the overall situation. Well, actually, the very first thing I did was put on some very loud music, then I started assessing the overall situation. The evergreen bush out front had overgrown into the walkway. My foyer had leaves and grass in it. My living space was configured improperly for a large party, so I would have to reconfigure it. There was a ton of mail on the dining table, which would either have to be dealt with or put away. My workspace would have to broken down. The bathroom could use a good once over, but at least there was already extra toilet paper in there. The wine stock was low. The kitchen floor was a disaster. The recycling needed to go out to the curb. The refrigerator needed to be cleaned out to free up some storage space. The dishwasher needed to be run. The pans and pots in the sink needed to be washed. I needed to pull out the Family Cookbook, look up the recipes for the items on the menu, check the ingredients against the contents of the horde cabinet, and write the grocery list. A trip to the grocery store was in order before the cooking could begin. While I was out, I probably should put gas in the car before I went driving out into the middle of nowhere with Dad for our cooking class. And then there was all that cooking that would need to be done.
After my hasty assessment, I began to prioritize. I hate to clean, so I naturally decided that the first thing I should do was write my grocery list so that I could get to the store before it got too late. Of course, given the late hour, I might have to go to the small local liquor store first to restock my red wine and buy a bottle of rum before they close at 9pm. The gas station is between the grocery store and my house, so I could fill my tank before coming home. When I get home, I could clean out the old food in the refrigerator to make room for the new food. As I’m taking out the trash bag of old food, I could take out the recycling as well. And then if I have any energy left, I could knock out one or two easy dishes or deal with the mail or reconfigure the living space. Tomorrow morning, I need to run unrelated errands at the post office, the bank, and the orchard. Any time between the errand run and the outing with my parents could be used to trim the evergreen bush and execute small bursts of cleaning tasks. After dinner, I can focus on cutting and prep work for cooking the next day. Sunday morning, I have a commitment to go to Mass. Otherwise, I’ll definitely want to have the living space reconfigured and cleaned by noon. The bathroom will probably be in its final state by then as well. I really hate it when people walk in on me while I am cleaning, but I don’t mind it at all when people walk in on me while I am cooking. The rest of the time will be devoted to getting as much of the menu done as possible.
Leaving the House to Go Shopping
In order to execute my plan, I needed to assess my skeleton menu for reasonableness. I wrote the skeleton menu while I was on the aircraft traveling back from a conference on Thursday afternoon. Then I texted my two vegetarian friends for their review because I wanted a warm fuzzy that they would have enough to eat. I also texted my really good friend to make sure that her gluten free sister would have enough to eat. All three came back with positive reviews.
The skeleton menu included:
- Frozen Boat Drink in New Dispensing Blender
- Pizza for the Twins
- Cheese & Cracker Plate for the Twins
- Homemade Hummus with Pitas
- Ratatouille
- Red Lentils
- Fajita Style Beef
- Fajita Style Chicken
- Peppers & Onions (cooked clean)
- Blue Cheese Potato Salad
- Guacamole
My really good friend said that she was making “princess themed” rice krispie treats and meringues. Upon reviewing the menu, she also said that she was going to make homemade tortillas and bring the accoutrements for the fajitas. So taking all that into account, I proceeded to grab my Family Cookbook and write my grocery list.
Of course, since it was a Friday night, I fell into text conversations with multiple friends as I was working on my grocery list. Some were rather serious – about implications of the foiled suicide bomber attack on Mecca – and some were rather frivolous – about the pros and cons of using a wine purse to its maximum capacity. Be that as it may, I didn’t actually finish the list until almost 10pm. So I postponed the grocery shopping until the next morning and had fun with my text conversations until well past midnight.
Somehow, I was alert and oriented before 6am on Saturday morning and managed to be underway to the grocery store around 7am. For the most part, I stuck to my list. One “radical” change was that I decided to double the hummus recipe while I was in the chickpea aisle, so I needed to double back to the produce section for an extra lemon. I also decided that, if time permitted during the week, I would bake the guys in the southwest corner of the third floor of the office building some oatmeal raisin cookies; so I bought a canister of Quaker oats. Unfortunately, the recipe for the cookies was under the lid, so I couldn’t verify that I actually had all the necessary ingredients. I suffered a minor setback in the frozen food aisle when I discovered that the store did not stock cans of frozen pineapple juice. I did some quick calculations to determine the volume of a reconstituted can of frozen orange juice and doubled back to the juice aisle to acquire the equivalent amount of canned pineapple juice. But overall, the excursion was fairly drama free.
The drama came at 845am when I arrived home and opened the refrigerator to pack in my purchases. There was no room for the meat, cheese, eggs, milk, and yogurt. Forget about trying to refrigerate the vegetables! I was forced to sort through what was on the second and third shelves of the refrigerator in order to make room. There was some pretty repulsive stuff. I’m not going to go into detail, but I will say that I have only been home for one full weekend since mid-March and let your imagination do the rest. In the end, I liberated enough space for everything that needed to be refrigerated, started a full dishwasher, and immediately tossed a bag of trash into the can at the curb.
Cooking on Sunday
Naturally, when I woke up on Sunday morning, I was still thinking about the part equation for the blender drink. I realized that if I used the full 48-ounce capacity for liquid, then I wouldn’t have any space for ice. So I could either serve the drink over glasses full of ice or cut down on the liquid in the blender. I figured if I used half a part of liquid, there should be ample space for ice and I could use the super cool ice-crushing blender for its intended purpose. That dilemma addressed, I made a pot of coffee and thought through a timeline of events that included leaving for about two hours to attend Mass at my local Church, pick up a bag of ice at the grocery store, and stop by the small local liquor store to replenish my wine stock. My schedule identified four kitchen tasks that should be completed prior to showering for Mass at 945am, two kitchen tasks that definitely needed to be completed no later that 345pm, and then another two kitchen tasks that could be completed whenever. I’d be good if I had the first round of pizzas in the oven at 445pm, because that would have them coming out at just about 5pm. Once those were out, I could judge if the second round needed to go in. After all the pizzas were baked, the oven would be free for the beef and the chicken, which would take between 20 and 30 minutes to cook, plus about 5 to 10 minutes to rest between cooking and slicing. Looking around my living space, there were a few minor tasks that needed to be done to get it ready for the dinner party. I probably should move the table and chairs to reconfigure the space for a large dinner party before I disappeared into the kitchen, but I could manage the other tasks in between kitchen tasks.
An old adage goes, “Man plans, and God laughs.” Well, God was definitely laughing at me on Sunday! My potatoes still had ten minutes left to simmer by the time I hopped into the shower. Although the dressing for the potato salad was done, none of the other three tasks had been started. Of course, my shower took longer than ten minutes so the potatoes were almost mush by the time I got back downstairs to drain them. Given my lack of progress, I decided to skip the early Mass and go to the later Mass instead. I tossed the potato salad with the dressing but decided to hold off on adding the blue cheese until it was time to serve. I completed the other three kitchen tasks: marinate the beef, marinate the chicken, make the hummus. The blender gave me some unnecessarily time consuming drama in processing the chickpeas, but everything turned out fine in the end. After Mass, I ran by my favorite small local liquor store to pick up some red wine for the evening and some rosé wine for the following weekend. I also ran through the grocery store to pick up guacamole, plastic containers, orange juice, and ice.
When I got home at 2pm, I realized that I was way behind schedule on the ratatouille; that needed to be in the oven by 245pm and I didn’t even have any of the vegetables prepped yet. Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to pull out the pizza dough before I started the ratatouille. Even though I decided not to deal with the eggplant, it still took forever prep the onion, squash, zucchini and peppers. When my really good friend and her sister walked in at 5pm, I was still working on browning the vegetables for the ratatouille and trying to keep the lentils from burning on the back burner. Of course, the first thing that they did was open some windows and porch doors because I wasn’t as successful with the lentils as I had thought.
After the pizzas were all done baking, I put in the beef for its 20 to 30 minutes in the oven. At some point during that time, the ratatouille was ready to come out, so I set that out with the lentils, near the hummus. When the beef was ready, I was supposed to slice it and pan fry it with sliced peppers and onions. But I didn’t have the peppers and onions sliced yet, and I knew that if I excused myself to do it, I would get chided for overkilling the food situation. As it was, my really good friend and her sister had set up a tray of fajita/taco fixings plus flour tortillas and homemade gluten free corn tortillas. And one of my new friends brought an authentic Indian dish that her mom made for us. There was plenty of food for guests to graze and make several rounds of the table.
Eventually, dessert happened. The twins had baked chocolate chip cookies with their mom and were pretty proud to share them with the group. My really good friend and her sister made both Princess Puffs (gluten free pink meringues with rainbow sprinkles) and Princess Rice Krispie Treats (rice krispie treats with pink chocolate drizzle and rainbow sprinkles). All three were really good!
The Verdict
So it is possible to pull off a ten-person dinner party in under 48 hours. In hindsight, I really should have motivated on Saturday night to prep the vegetables for the ratatouille. That would have saved me a huge time crunch when I returned on Sunday afternoon, and some craziness when my guests arrived a few hours later. But I did have plenty of food without adding the eggplant to the ratatouille or pan-frying the peppers and onions for the fajita beef. In fact, as I was putting away the leftovers, I realized that I forgot to finish and serve the potato salad! And the store bought guacamole…
The Recipes
Dad’s Fajitas
1. Season chicken breast or flank steak one side at a time with the following seasonings in order:
• Red wine vinegar
• Chili vinegar (first side only)
• Soy sauce
• Worchestershire sauce
• A-1 steak sauce
• Gravy master (one capful on first side only)
• Sesame oil (sparingly)
• Garlic powder (generously)
• Salt and Black pepper
• Ground cinnamon (very generous – coat entire meat)
2. Marinate for a minimum of one hour. Cut onions, red and green peppers into long thin strips.
3. Sauté chopped garlic until translucent in skillet (cast iron is best) to flavor oil. Set aside.
4. Grill or broil on high heat. Remove and slice against grain into thin strips.
5. Stir-fry onions and peppers with garlic in skillet. Add meat and toss to mix.
6. Serve with flour tortillas.
♥ For a spicier flavor, smear a spoonful of chipotle puree on each side of the meat before coating with cinnamon.
Potato and Blue Cheese Salad.
I admit that this is an unexpected combination, but it is very good if you give it a chance! Of course, you can skip the blue cheese if that is just too weird for you
3 lbs red potatoes, unpeeled but cut in bite sized pieces
⅓ c cider vinegar
⅔ c olive oil or garlic oil
1 bunch fresh chives, fine chopped
2 scallions, thin sliced
2 tsp honey
finely grated peel of one lemon
3- 4 shallots, minced
Salt and black pepper to taste
½ lb crumbled blue cheese
1. Cook potatoes in salted water for about 30 minutes, until slightly overcooked. Drain and rinse and drain very well again. Transfer to a non-metallic serving bowl.
2. Whisk oil, vinegar, honey, chives, scallions, lemon zest and shallots in small bowl until well combined.
3. Pour half the dressing over the cooked potatoes and stir to coat. Smash a few potatoes slightly for texture.
4. Add enough dressing to coat entirely, but not pool at the bottom of the bowl.
5. Taste and adjust salt and pepper if required.
6. If not serving immediately, refrigerate covered. (Best if refrigerated overnight)
7. Add blue cheese and toss to combine before serving.
♥ To cut down on the work: Get rid of the potato prep work with either two 24-ounce packages of pre-cut potatoes (produce section) or three 14-ounce packages of baby potato-vegetable medley (freezer section).
Hummus
This is so simple, you may never use store-bought hummus again.
15oz can chickpeas
1 lemon 2-3 cloves garlic, smashed
4 oz plain yogurt
2-3 shakes dried oregano
2-3 shakes black pepper
1. Rinse chickpeas well. Put chickpeas in blender.
2. Roll lemon on counter with palms to soften. Halve and squeeze juice from both halves into blender. Get as much pulp as possible, but avoid the seeds as much as possible.
3. Add garlic and yogurt. Puree until thick and smooth.
4. If it is too thick for your liking, gradually add water or olive oil while continuing to puree.
5. Transfer to non-reactive bowl. Dust with oregano and stir once or twice to incorporate.
6. Refrigerate covered to chill completely. Adjust salt and pepper to taste before serving.
♥ Diversify the flavor to complement the main meal by skipping the lemon, augmenting with fine lemon zest, replacing the raw garlic with 2-3 times as much roasted garlic, substituting a dusting of curry or cayenne for the dusting of oregano, stirring in slightly toasted and coarsely chopped pignoli nuts, stirring in a spoonful of the olive tapenade and so on.
My Ratatouille
Before Mom disclosed her recipe, I blended a bunch of book recipes to create my own.
1 ½ tbsp olive oil (x # vegetables + 1)
1 white onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, smashed
various vegetables, cubed
1 ½ cups vegetable broth
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried rosemary leaves
2-3 bay leaves
½ tsp dried thyme
½ tsp ground cumin
14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
Optional: 2 jalapenos or other chiles, seeded and minced
1. Preheat oven to 400F.
2. Heat 1½ tbsp olive oil in large pan over medium heat. Cook onion until translucent.
3. Add garlic. Toss with onion. Lower heat to very low.
4. In another skillet, heat 1 ½ tbsp olive oil on very high heat. Add portion of first vegetable to cover the bottom of the pan. Cook until lightly browned on all sides. Transfer to onion pan and toss with contents. Repeat to finish first vegetable.
5. Repeat Step #4 with each vegetable. Cook chiles with peppers or similar vegetables.
6. When all the vegetables have been browned and added to the big pan with onions, mix in the spices, tomatoes and vegetable broth.
7. Transfer mixture to an ovenproof casserole. Cover and bake at 400F for one hour.
8. Remove from oven. Drain liquid into the skillet and simmer until reduced in half.
9. Add the vegetables to reduced liquid. Toss well to coat and reheat.
10. Remove the bay leaves and serve warm.
♥ Vegetable Combination #1: yellow squash, zucchini, eggplant, red and green bell pepper, jalapeno pepper
♥ Vegetable Combination #2: butternut squash, eggplant, zucchini
Red Curry Lentils
Another case of heavy trial and error work on a less than impressive magazine clipping.
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 tbsp minced ginger (jar)
4 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp tumeric
2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp ground coriander
2 14oz cans coconut milk
1 cup water
1 ½ cup dried red lentils
1 14oz can diced tomatoes
Optional: 4oz can chopped Mexican chiles
Optional: 12oz can chickpeas, drained
Optional: 1 lb zucchini or eggplant, peeled and diced
1. In a medium saucepan on medium high heat, sauté onion in olive oil until translucent.
2. Add ginger and garlic. Sauté until garlic is almost translucent.
3. Optional: If using zucchini or eggplant, add and sauté until translucent before proceeding to the dried spices.
4. Add dried spices. Sauté until fragrant (a little less than a minute).
5. Add just enough coconut milk to coat the bottom and be able to scrape up the spices.
6. Add the remainder of the can. Bring to a boil. The mixture should be very fragrant.
7. Lower heat to low. Add remaining can of coconut milk, water, lentils and chiles (if desired). Stir well. Simmer covered for five minutes, stirring occasionally.
8. Add remaining ingredients (including chickpeas if desired). Stir well.
9. Simmer covered for 15-20 minutes, until lentils and chickpeas are soft. Be sure to stir and monitor carefully because it burns very easily at this stage.
10. Re-season before serving, if necessary.
♥ It is bad news to attempt this with regular dried lentils (or worse – canned lentils). The red lentils have their own unique texture that is needed to make this work.
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