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Entertaining?

© Steve Compton

For the guests maybe, but for the cook? 4 to 6 people? Not a problem. When the number reaches double digits, a cook's blood pressure tends to increase in direct proportion to the size of the guest list. The little wheels in our brains start to spin like the end of a rinse cycle in a washing machine. What to serve, where to seat everyone, is anyone allergic to haggis?

You get past those questions, set a date and time, and start to plan the "Event". In our little creative brains, it's not just a meal, but indeed, an event to be planned with care and consideration for all those wonderful people that will come into your home.

First "The Menu" is planned. I've been told by many friends and family that I make great pizza. I've prepared and served pizza for as few as 4 and as many as 40 people, so the toughest part of a meal when pizza is on the menu, is figuring out how much salad to make. The next part is scaring up enough pizza pans if there are 40 guests.

Dinners that involve a specific cuisine like Mexican, Asian or Italian take a little more thought. Time to get out the handy Betty Crocker cookbooks and start calculating ingredients, amounts, spices, etc. etc.(Let's see the square root of 49 is 7, divided by the cooking time of pasta, times the number of days in the week...)

Next "The List" is assembled based on the type of meal your serving. Lasagna, salad, homemade bread sticks, a relish tray, peanuts, and those little dinner mints(that come in 7 different colors but all taste the same)for 20 people, will generate a fairly sizeable grocery list. I assemble my list of food stuffs by aisle. This is one of the truly organized things I do. I know the produce, dairy, and baking aisles like the back of my hand. I hate to admit it, but when I travel on business to far away lands, say Texas for instance, I scope out the local grocery chains. Some business travelers frequent local museums and tourist attractions. Give me Piggly Wiggly or Albertsons.

After all the items have been purchased, (Normally, after at least two trips to the store, because I most always forget something) "The Preparation" begins. Cooking is definitely a "some assembly required" task. The preparation is my favorite part of a dinner party extravaganza. I'm not sure why though. Maybe its tinkering with all the raw materials and forming them into a delectable creation that friends fawn over. It is sort of like taking a clump of clay and sculpting a great work of art. The Picasso of Pizza perhaps. The Michelangelo of Muffins. Nawwwwwww, I just like to chop stuff up and throw it into hot olive oil.

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