If there were any doubt about my love of cooking for crowds, my sense of anticipation as I head into August would end it. I have two events for that month. The smaller event is a meet-and-greet for my beloved Cherry Creek Chorale. I’ll make some cookies and also one of my savory cheesecakes from my cookbook. Someone else will bring fruit and bottled water. This food will very much fit into the “food as fellowship” role. We’ll be meeting at 6:30, so after dinner. The food is simply a reason, an excuse, for people to come early, stand around, and talk. All perfectly legitimate.
The bigger event will be the last of the pre-service breakfasts being served at my church. We started these in April, and they’ve been very successful. Once we’re into September our schedule will change and these events will be over for the time being. So I’m planning on a big blowout, perhaps making one of my sweet-roll variations and also doing a bangup version of hash browns, using the magical freeze-dried ones from Costco and building from there. I’ll do sausages and fruit, too. It’ll be great.
And with that I’ll be plunging into a somewhat-normal year. We’re planning to start up our regular four-concerts-a-year schedule for the Chorale, with the first performances in October. I’m not sure what the post-concert receptions are going to look like this year, but I’m hoping for a return on that front. I’ll be doing the retreat breakfasts as usual. We aren’t having the Chorale picnic this year, but I’m sure there will be an annual dinner next May. The church women’s retreat is in October and the Christmas dinner/party in December. On the whole I’ll probably be in charge of one big event per month through next May. Woo-hoo!
I love the idea of planning out the menus and drawing up the shopping lists. Yes, there will be times for each of these events when I’ll be tired and tempted to cut an item or two from the lineup. I’m hoping, though, to put into effect the lessons I’ve learned over the many years I’ve been doing this: doing as much as possible ahead of time, resisting the temptation to say “oh, I’ll just finish it up in the morning,” and doing due diligence on delegating.
If you’d like to get the recipes for the dark beer brownies or the savory lemon cheesecake that I plan to make for the chorale get-together, be sure to get my cookbook!
Is everyone starting to feel as if we’re digging out of the tunnel and breathing fresh air? I sure do. I got my second vaccine shot on Monday, March 8, so almost two weeks ago, and after being pretty much wiped out for most of the next day I felt fine and have continued to do so. (Charlie Sykes, a political commentator whom my husband and I follow obsessively, said that for about 12 hours after getting his second shot he thought he’d been beaten up by a gorilla. My symptoms were more along the lines of being punched a few times by a chimp.)
Just a thought. As I sit here late Tuesday afternoon my mother-in-law and I have done some menu simplification. We’ve ended up having only 11 people (and we’re happy to see all of them, of course), and so in the end Jan was the voice of reason and said, no, we didn’t really need a turkey plus a turkey breast, plus three kinds of gravy, plus two kinds of stuffing. We have one vegan guest and I want to have items she can eat, so that’s a nice challenge. Here’s what we’re having, with links to recipes that are linkable:
I have 
