I Suddenly Feel Inspired to Entertain

Thanks to this book, Perfect Party Food which truly seems to live up to the long explanatory subtitle (that every book seems required to have these days), "All the Recipes and Tips You'll Ever Need for Stress-Free Entertaining from the Diva of Do-Ahead."

Every single recipe serves 10-12 people and has at the very least several steps that can be done up to two days ahead of time. Tips are scattered throughout, some of which I already know but others which scatter are quite new to me and seem simple common sense now that I have read them.

These days my large group cooking seems to be done for big groups of teenagers and I could see this coming in handy, depending on how much effort I feel like putting into it. However, in the nearby future I can anticipate the possibility of cooking for a marriage retreat, a potluck parish celebration of our patron saint, and our parish youth ministry.

I'm only partway through but this book is going to have some test runs done on half recipes (to simply feed our family) to check out the viability of the "do aheads."

Because if they work? Maybe we'll actually have large groups of friends over. Something I remember from our dim past and that we loved to do before the labor of kids and volunteer activities made entertaining seem like just one more job.