We finally got around to having some of our neighbors over for a long overdue dinner party last night. This morning I was sitting around in my pajamas reading the news and poking around on my iPad, and came across an article on the Bon Appetit website entitled
How to Throw a Stress-Free Dinner Party. I googled the subject and read a few other similar articles, and thought this would be a perfect subject for an article here. Some of the tips I read I thought were valid, and some not so much so. I'll summarize
my tips for mitigating stress and let you know how we did preparing for our dinner party last night.
1.) Display a menu so guests know what to expect. This one is all me as I try to always display a menu, including any specialty drinks or wine pairings as well. It also gives a festive touch to your party.
Our score: B+. I'm marking us down because I didn't sit down to do it until about an hour before our guests were due to arrive; I encountered a printer problem, uttered a few obscenities, then left Al to solve the problem while I jumped in the shower.
Click here to see our Valentine's Dinner Menu
2.) Make the last course first. Most desserts can be made ahead, so take advantage of that. I made this Raspberry Cheesecake (page 361-362) on Saturday, including the topping, then on the day of the party, all I had to do was assemble it. I love this recipe as it incorporates lemon zest in both the crust and the creamy inside, and the raspberry / lemon combination is one of my personal favorites!
Our score: A+. The dessert was delicious, and all I had to do to serve it was to cut it and sprinkle a little Confectioner's sugar on the plate first. Cappaccino and Latte at the touch of a button made after-dinner coffee a snap. The only fail here was we forgot to use the "chocolate spoons" we bought.
3.) Plan ahead. Simply stated, figure out your theme, decide what you are going to cook, make a shopping list, select the wines you want to serve, and do as much as you can
in advance. Our dinner party date just happened to coincide with Valentine's Day, so we had a ready theme (For anyone who knows me, I love cooking with some sort of theme in mind to tie it all together). My advice is to do any decorating well in advance of your party date, so that you can focus only on the food as the date approaches. Decide if you're having a sit down meal or a buffet, make sure you have napkins, and enough plates, serving dishes, etc.
Our score: C+. Our theme was a no-brainer, and I had lots of Valentine decorations from a family Valentine's weekend a few years ago, but we didn't decide on a menu until Friday - just 2 days before the party. I didn't start my decorating until Saturday morning, so the stress was on! On the positive side, we decorated enough to make it very festive, but still kept it relatively classy. I got lots of complements on the floating candle, fresh orchid, and hearts water arrangement on the dining room table. A few lights, fresh flowers, heart beads adorning the wine bottles and simple silver heart cocktail napkins (left over from our self-catered wedding in our house 14 years ago) completed the theme. I realized I didn't have the right color napkins, so bought some new ones the day before, then had to rush home and wash and iron them. Proper planning ahead would have prevented this stress!
4.) Go with what you know. In other words, hosting a dinner party is not the time to try new dishes, or experiment with different cooking methods; rather it is the time to showcase your specialties.
Our score: C-. We made a new appetizer we'd never made before (Smoked Salmon Spread on Petits Toast), a new Horseradish Sauce, my mother-in-law's Carrot Soufflé (page 71), and we cooked the beef tenderloin roast a different way than we usually do. The salmon appetizer, the Soufflé, and the horseradish sauce were a hit, but frankly, the beef was cooked a little past that perfect rare/medium rare point. We also make 14 individual ramekins of a new Comté/Emmenthaler/Provolone Mac-n-Cheese. We made a prototype a few hours before the party just to test it, and ended up throwing them all in the trash, making a quick dash to the grocery store, and made Twice-Baked Potatoes (page 355) instead. We love to cook new and different dishes all the time, but the point here is to do that at a time other than when you're hosting a dinner party, so that you don't add any unnecessary stress.
5.) Pick a good group. Choose friends who have similar interests, and ideally, who have met before your dinner party.
Our score: A+. We had 6 couples, all neighbors, roughly the same age group. All of these guys are not only our neighbors, but our friends as well. As hosts, this group was stress free!
6.) Cook smart. Don't drive yourself crazy by serving food that involves to-order cooking, constant stirring, or bringing several dishes to a finish simultaneously just as the meal is to be served. Keep in mind how many dishes you can fit into the oven at once.
Our score: Wow, we failed miserably on this one. I am never one to cook things ahead of time, as I like food to be fresh and hot when served. I was rotating dishes in and out of the oven, Al was stressing over how the meat increased in temperature 30 degrees in 30 seconds, the wine reduction had to be made after the meat came out of the oven, and the asparagus needed to go in at the final few minutes. We were fortunate that all our neighbors know each other, and everyone was catching up with each other, and didn't pay much attention to us in the kitchen running around like the proverbial chickens with their heads cut off!
7.) Choose good tunes. No gathering is really a party without some good background music. Ideally, make a playlist. Otherwise, let Pandora do the work for you, by setting a channel, and don't spend another minute thinking about this one.
Our score: B+. We tested some different Pandora stations while we were prepping before the party, and selected one we liked. There was a point during the evening where I could hear a pulsating techno beat, and asked Al to switch it to a little Miles Davis. All things considered, good tunes, proper volume.
8.) Dim the lights. Low light makes us all look (according to one article I read) "prettier, sexier, and more mysterious."
Our score: A+. A wood fire in the Living Room, another fire in the Family Room, candles everywhere, lights dimmed, strings of heart lights in the windows and on the plants set a festive mood. Of course, I was lighting the candles when our first guests arrived . . .
9.) Clean as you go. Don't wait until you've made all the food before cleaning. Pro tip: Start the party with an empty dishwasher. Our score: A+. I am a classic "clean as you go" cook. We actually ran the dishwasher 4 times on the day of the party BEFORE the party, but like pros, started with an empty dishwasher. I'm a pretty messy cook, so I stopped and mopped the floor after all the food prep was done.
10.) Clean up the party mess before you go to bed. This is a tip I suggest, although surprisingly, I didn't read this one anywhere else.
Our score: A+. I find that after all the guests leave, it's a perfect time to clean up the aftermath and debrief as you're washing and drying dishes. Other than the 2 wine glasses I knocked over and broke, we excelled on this one. Plus . . . I can't imagine waking up to a pile of dirty dishes - that would be serious stress!
11.) Cook for your audience. If you have a group of people in their 50s, you probably shouldn't serve Jello Shots. It's also important to find out it there are any dietary restrictions, like do you need to cook gluten-free or vegetarian?
Our score: B. I had Al check with a few of our guests to make sure they ate red meat, but other than that we just winged it.
12.) If you're serving wine, provide some type of wine glass marker. I didn't see this one on any list either, but I noticed several times last evening someone was trying to find their glass.
Our score: We failed this one, but I'm vowing to find something clever before my next event.
Summary - Although we used to entertain frequently, it had been awhile since we had people over for dinner other than our (grown) kids and their friends. Our kids eat any and everything, and are laid back about whether we eat at 7 or 9:30. We were a bit out of practice, and subsequently a little stressed because we did everything at the last minute. Now the beauty of this type of get-together though is we were in a safe environment, surrounded by friends who were just happy to get together with other people they know and like. We didn't need to impress anyone. We all had a great time talking, catching up, and laughing over some good wine and tasty food. Hopefully, we'll entertain more in the future, and maybe, just maybe, we'll even pay attention to some of these stress-reducing hints.
So get together with a handful of your friends, and cook something!
Directions:
In a frying pan sauté onion in 2 tablespoons of butter until translucent, add the garlic and ginger, cook for 1-2 minutes over medium heat.
Add the cooked onion, garlic, and ginger to another large soup pot, add tomatoes and chicken stock and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 8-10 minutes.
Make the roux in the same pan as you used for the onion mixture, it will add flavor. Add the butter and flour and combine over medium high heat until the mixture starts to brown, about 3-4 minutes. Remove from heat.
Add the roux to the soup mixture and stir well. Carefully puree hot soup with a hand emulsifier/stick blender, adding the cream and simmering until the soup is hot again. Taste and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Every meal tells a story. Just regular food cooked by regular people.
Who doesn’t love to see what real people are eating and drinking - not just for special occasions, but every day cooking as well. I’m lucky that my family not only loves to travel, eat and drink, but we all also love to cook and share our culinary exploits with one another.
My husband (known fondly as The BF) and my kids – Charlie, Joe, Sara, Matt, Ben and Josh – have always been enthusiastic eaters. As they got older and started their own lives or went away to college, they would often call me up and ask how I made meatloaf, or mac and cheese, or simply how to poach an egg. As I would share this information with them, the idea emerged that maybe I should write a cookbook. Of course, our family is certainly not the first family to want their repertoire of family recipes to be organized in one place. So as I cooked, I started taking pictures and documenting what I was cooking. I looked for a template for a family cookbook, but couldn’t find anything to my liking, so I used iworks Pages to create my own. Cooking was the easy part. Learning new software, and making the book look the way I wanted was the challenge! I decided that this would be no ordinary family cookbook, rather I would incorporate pictures of family cooking and eating, and since my husband, Alan, and I love to travel and try regional specialties, I decided to include pictures of our travel culinary adventures as well.
So after 10 years of saying, “I’m almost done with the cookbook,” I finally finished it in December, and proudly presented it to my family. I immediately started getting texts with pictures of what they were cooking, and thought this would be cool to share with everyone else. Now that the cookbook is complete, it seems like the logical next step is to create an interactive environment where we can all share pictures, comment about the recipes, and add new ones. Again, I am faced with learning new software, so it may take a little while for me to really get the hang of blogging, but if you can bear with me, I promise I will try to make this interesting and worthwhile, as I tend to never do anything halfway.
I started cooking when I was about 12, but it’s never too late to start. As Julia Childs once said, “I was 32 when I started cooking: up until then, I just ate.”
I am open for ideas and any and all comments. If you cook a dish, and change ingredients or do something to enhance it, add that in the comments so others can benefit from your changes. (If you don’t like it, that’s ok to say too.) Anyone can post any relevant comments here, as long as they are not mean spirited.
I’ve organized this site as follows:
What's New: Here I will add posts of new dishes we are cooking that are not already in the cookbook. By “we” I mean Alan and me, or anyone else who sends me a picture and the recipe. (It may take another week or so to get content here, as our kitchen isn’t done yet and we have no stove.)
What's Cooking: This section will be you guys cooking the Cookbook recipes. Now don’t be discouraged if initially all the recipes are basic, easy ones. There are cookbook recipes that are more challenging as well, so stay tuned! In fact, you can post anything here that you think others might be interested in.
In the Glass: We can share tips about wine, beer, or other spirits that we’re enjoying at the moment. For example, I tried the sommelier wine of the day recommendation from one of our favorite restaurants recently; I liked it so much I went home and ordered a case. I thought it would be a great place to share such finds here, as it was a delicious and very affordable wine.
Favorite Eats: Short reviews and pictures from various restaurants will be posted here, including from areas any of us travel to. Having reviews from various contributors should make this an interesting read.
Gadgets & Cookware: Special cookware and culinary gadgets that we find useful or interesting will be featured here.
Just For Fun: This section is simply fun stuff related to cooking and eating.
Download Cookbook: The Cookbook is now available for download.