After a very indulgent week of birthdays and holidays and houseguests, I am ready to scale back to the simplest type of meal, which for me means a week of Protein + Veggie dinners. Tonight, I think, we will be dining on Chicken + Broccoli because that's what I have in the fridge.
However, I have also briefly lost my mind and planned not one but TWO dinner parties for consecutive weekends. This always sounds so fun in the abstract. I am feeling more settled in our house and it truly is a great space for entertaining – our back yard is especially entertaining-friendly, when the weather is pleasant. We have friends and family visiting from out of town and it feels right and good to invite them over for dinner. I want to do this. I am looking forward to ti. And yet, when I get down to the nitty gritty of Hosting People for Dinner, I fall right back into the old conundrum of WHAT IN THE WIDE WILD WORLD DO I FEED PEOPLE?
You know I like to cook! To the extent that any human can enjoy planning meals day after day after day, I enjoy it. I am not, however, a particularly good cook. My husband is the type of person who will eat almost anything, so I have no real gauge of whether anything I make appeals beyond my particular picky palate.
When it comes to hosting people, I want something that I can prepare – almost totally – in advance. I do not like people helping me in the kitchen, and making sure everything is nearly done before they arrive makes this a non-issue. I want something fairly foolproof, since our guests are not regulars at our dinner table; I don't mind, so much, experimenting on my parents or even my in-laws because I know they will come back, and they also have prior experiences against which to weigh this one. But the dinner guests we're hosting over the next couple of weeks are NOT regulars; in fact, this is not only everyone's first time at my house, but their first time eating anything I've made, ever.
The things that come to mind are simple, everyone-likes-them meals like tacos or burgers. And yet I feel like those are TOO SIMPLE?! We have been to dinner at one of these people's houses before, and they made us grilled steaks, which seems MUCH fancier to me than tacos. It feels like we should respond in kind??? This is so dumb.
I feel like the most obvious answer is GRILL SOME MEAT, but our grill is… special. And by special I mean: it cooks everything unevenly, probably due to the fact that the burners light only in the back half of the grill, and sometimes one of the burners won't light at all, but if even a tiny drop of oil slides off into the flame the resulting flare turns everything in proximity to charcoal. I have been over every inch of this grill, inside and out, and without buying ALL NEW PARTS, I think we are stuck with This Is the Way It Is, and "the way it is" seems to be "highly mediocre slash inedibly charred." Oh, also, this weekend I opened the grill to turn it on and THERE WAS A MOUSE ON IT, so I think it may be a while before I feel like I have properly sanitized it for food-cooking purposes again.
Sometimes I turn to salads. In fact, I've been turning to salads a lot lately, to the point that my husband is growing weary of our repertoire.
I don't want to use our oven, because I will melt. But I am WILLING to use it. Not that I have mastered the way our oven cooks things yet, either.
These are not the kind of people where "let's order takeout" would be appropriate; I certainly have friends who would be fine with that, but I think these guests might be a little miffed if I didn't cook. Hmmm. Maybe I could order some catering and pretend I cooked it???? That feels wildly dishonest but in a possibly-doable way?
You would think that, after a good decade of having people over for dinner and stressing about it in advance, I would have a little stockpile of things I feel comfortable cooking for company. And yet, I don't even have ONE THING. When I think back on past dinner parties, I see only things that didn't turn out, or things that don't seem appropriate for this time of year (chili) or these specific people (tacos).
This is a question I have asked you many times over the years – and I should probably just go back and read some of those posts, instead of writing the same whine yet again and asking for the exact same advice I've never taken before – but what do YOU want to eat when you go to someone's house? What is YOUR go-to Meal For Company?
My biggest food fear when going to someone's house is probably a casserole of some sort. I dislike casseroles, as a rule; too many things mushed together, too squishy. Plus, casseroles often seem to contain tomatoes, which is a food I cannot bear to eat, even out of politeness. So I think my preference when I go TO someone's house is several discrete things, so I can take what appeals without (hopefully!) hurting anyone's feelings. Like a protein and a side dish and a salad. So that's what I like to serve, hoping that everyone will at least find SOMETHING edible. But I also want it to be GOOD, something I like, something the company likes. Argh.
Should I make tacos? I should probably just make tacos. But maybe I will make balsamic pork instead? It's easy; I can make it in the crockpot, and most everything else can be made ahead of time. We top it with a variety of toppings (caramelized onions, kalamata olives, feta cheese), which makes it fun. I can serve it with pita and hummus, which most people like. Hmm. Maybe this is a good choice for one of the dinner parties. But what do I for the other one?!?!?
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