Post-Party Analysis - Respect Food Roles

pile of utensils, ingredients, and bowls on a cluttered kitchen counter Although I’ve temporarily discontinued my posting on the “Intentional Hospitality” blog I’m still cooking away. Last night I provided the desserts and punches for my church’s Christmas banquet. This turned out to be yet another one of those “I-thought-I-was-going-to-have-an-easy-time-of-it-but-I-was-wrong” episodes in my life. I had made my famous orange-almond biscotti before the Cherry Creek Chorale’s concert over a week ago with the intention of putting them together into tree shapes held together by frosting, but I just ran out of steam and time, so I ended up putting the baked biscotti into the freezer with the intention of building the trees for this party.

I kept thinking, ‘I have the biscotti made, so all I have to do is make the cranberry tarts and the chocolate peppermint crunch cookies. I’ll do that Sunday afternoon and still have time to clean up the kitchen.’ What was I smokin’? I worked like a dog all afternoon just to get everything made and still ran out of time for making the frosting for those blasted biscotti. Some very helpful people who came early pitched in, and one woman suggested that we could stack the biscotti plain. I wish I had a picture of the beautiful platter she made. People were saying, “You’re doing Jenga!” It was great.

Well, all was well in the end. I could have done a lot more prep on Saturday and saved myself having a nervous breakdown Sunday. But the important thing is that everything was on the tables, ready to go, and that people had a good time. I’ve now gotten through my two big parties for December, but there’s more to come on the family front. My sister- and brother-in-law get here Friday, and we’ll have many get-togethers during the week they’re here. So I’ll have lots of opportunities to either a) procrastinate or b) be proactive (pro-acticate?).

If the items mentioned above sound intriguing, I do have posted recipes for three of them. Here are the links:

For the biscotti trees: “A Beautiful Celebratory Dessert”

For the cranberry tarts and pink egg nog: “Second Time Is the Charm!”

Save

Related posts:

1 thought on “Post-Party Analysis”