Chapter One from Feeding the Masses Without Losing Your Mind:
“Why I Wrote This Book”
So you’ve been asked to oversee the food for the reception after your child’s music recital or graduation ceremony. Or you belong to an organization that puts on programs, perhaps a community choir or a club of some kind. (My in-laws are the leaders of a local square-dance club, and there is no gathering that does not require food.) Or your church is putting on an Easter breakfast for the congregation or a dinner for new members, or youth-group activities that (of course) include food. Or you’re helping out with a wedding reception. Or maybe you’re in charge of said reception. (“Mom,” your daughter said, “We’d really like to save money on the wedding reception. Could you do the food for it?” Gulp.)
The opportunities are really endless—and can seem totally daunting. That’s where this book comes in. I’ve written it not as anyone who’s ever done professional catering or restaurant work (and have no plans to do so) and not as anyone who’s ever had an official title in an organization. I’ve just stepped up and done stuff, sometimes because I’ve been asked to do it and sometimes because I’ve volunteered.
May I give you an example here? Back in the fall of 2012 I joined a community choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale. I had no particular agenda beyond the goal of singing with them. I didn’t even know if I’d get in or not. October rolled around, and the week before our first concert a woman asked at rehearsal for a show of hands from those planning to bring food for the Friday-night post-concert reception. A few of us responded. “Okay,” she said, “That looks fine.” ‘Hmmm,’ I thought. ‘Is that all she’s going to do?’ I’d done a fair amount of work on wedding receptions and knew the type of planning and prep that usually went into an event of this size. Unfortunately, my fears were realized: The reception food for that concert consisted of a few plates of cookies and some lemonade. It was pretty underwhelming. I knew that the woman in charge had been landed with a whole “front of the house” set of duties—ushers, the box office, greeters–as well as the reception. There was no reason for her to be doing all that work. Would she let me take over the receptions? I asked. Why yes. She most certainly would.
And I was off to the races. Within a couple of years I had ended up being the unofficial “food person” for the choir, overseeing the food for ten events per season: four concert receptions, four member breakfasts, one picnic and one annual dinner. Along the way I suffered many a crisis of nerves, but that small trauma was more than outweighed by the delight of working with wonderful people and of hearing one of the world’s sweetest sounds: voices of people standing around, talking animatedly, and eating my food. As I write these words in the late summer of 2020, I haven’t had the chance to do any of these events since March because of concert cancellations related to COVID-19. I know that someday soon, though, perhaps as early as next March, I will again be frantically loading up the car with dozens and dozens of treats, white-knuckling my way through rush-hour traffic, and going through the getting-the-tablecloths-on-the-tables routine that always takes much longer than I think it will. I can hardly wait.
What do I want to do for the readers of this book who may also be getting involved in events of this type? The desired results boil down to two:
- Set a high bar for the food served at events, but
- Make it as easy on the cook as possible.
But before I get to the “how,” I think it’s important to explain the “why,” as in, “Why bother?” Why do the planning, and the shopping, and the prep, and the cleanup? Why ask people to get off their couches, for heaven’s sake, and trek over to the church gymnasium or to the fellowship hall after a concert or the picnic tables at the park? Why, why, why, when we can sit at home and eat takeout while we watch TV? And why, especially, do we need to go to the trouble of, like, making food for these events? All very good questions, ones that should be answered before tackling such a project.
Let me start by quoting from Edith Schaeffer, who was the wife of Francis Schaeffer, the Christian writer and apologist (and she ought to have gotten a medal for putting up with him, but that’s another story) and a fascinating writer and speaker in her own right:
Food cannot take care of spiritual, psychological and emotional problems, but the feeling of being loved and cared for, the actual comfort of the beauty and flavor of food, the increase of blood sugar and physical well-being, help one to go on during the next hours better equipped to meet the problems. (from The Hidden Art of Homemaking)
She’s specifically talking about having guests in her home, and she goes into more detail on this subject in her book The Tapestry: The life and times of Francis and Edith Schaeffer. Her point is that when people are tired and hungry, especially if they’ve been traveling and even more especially when they’ve been traveling with kids, the last thing they want to do is to get in a car, trek to a restaurant, and wait to be served, all the while trying to keep their kids under control who are going bananas because they’ve been cooped up all day. But her overall point is relevant to the general subject of entertaining guests: think about what they really need and be willing to give it to them.
Having this type of mindset will keep you from wandering too far over into the realm of showing off, admittedly sometimes a hard line to draw. Here’s what Cheryl Mendelsohn said in her book Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House:
When I made hand-rolled pasta for a dinner, I learned the hard way that some guests will find this annoying, as they do not feel comfortable eating a meal that they regard as the product of too much trouble.
Because homemade food is getting rarer and rarer, about as fast as cooking shows get more and more common (you figure that one out), the above attitude is all too common. It may be necessary sometimes for those of us who like to cook to rein ourselves in a little and perhaps not be as fancy as our inclinations would incline. But I’m going to keep on fighting the battle for homemade food! I have to tell this story about an experience I had along these lines. I’m a very good breadmaker, and I have a couple of recipes (whole-wheat rolls and breadsticks, which you’ll find in the bread chapter) that are extremely easy to make for a crowd and also extremely delicious. People act as if I’ve just designed a rocket to the moon: “You made these?” So a number of years ago when our church was going to start a monthly dinner as an outreach ministry I volunteered to supply those items for each meal.
I’d make sure that there was a basket of freshly-baked breads on each table, a touch that would add some real hominess to a meal that was being served in the church gym. I presented my idea to the woman in charge, sure that she would welcome my contribution. Instead, her face kind of screwed up, and she said, “I think we need to use the resources we already have.” I was taken aback. What was she talking about? Whatever these “resources” were, she was clearly uninterested in my offer. So I said “okay” and didn’t think too much more about it. Later on, though, I discovered what those “resources” were: the stale bakery leftovers donated to our church each weekend. I was kind of miffed. Sure, we want to use food wisely, but the whole purpose of the dinner was to be welcoming and friendly, to show that our church was eager to share in the life of the community. The bread donations would come in regardless of how much we used, and whatever we didn’t take would be passed on. (I feel very strongly that donations of this type should go directly to food banks and other institutions of that kind without a detour to churches made up of middle-class people who don’t need them, but that, as with so many of my ideas, is a subject for another day.) Did we really have to use day-old commercial breads as part of this endeavor? Sheesh.
I realize that everyone is busy. I do. But honestly, folks! How celebratory is it to have Chips Ahoys and Nutter Butters and Doritos as a big part of the eighth-grade end-of-year party? Can’t everyone make at least something? I remember bringing in my homemade item to that particular soirée and being given the old fish eye by the mothers who were setting up the serving table. Ladies and gentlemen, I was appalled. Why even bother to stand around eating the same old stuff? I guess that no matter how bad the food is you at least have a venue in which to interact with other people, but it just doesn’t seem to me as if the gathering would be very celebratory.
Gretchen Rubin quotes a blog comment in her book The Happiness Project (Revised Edition): Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun: “FOOD, FOOD, FOOD. I have found having really great finger foods is a great way to connect people. Particularly unusual foods that people have never tried. It allows you to spark up conversations between people about their interests.” (p. 149) And I can’t forget the wistful comment on the PBS cooking show “A Chef’s Life” about church potlucks—that they used to be a chance for the women to show off their specialties, but now everyone just picks something up at Wal-Mart. At the wedding receptions for which I’ve worked the food did indeed “spark up conversations.” Never a bad thing! Getting the people together is the first step, and a vital one. Nothing replaces face-to-face contact. But then give the people something decent to eat!
I must stop here and say, though, that sometimes the serving of food is counterproductive. Although this is a rather dicey, tricky area of thought, I don’t want to plunge into my great wisdom about serving groups without urging my readers to consider the possibility that it isn’t always necessary. Here are some ideas to consider:
For gatherings in our home that have been centered on some type of study and which don’t occur at mealtime, I have always steadfastly refused to serve what I call sn-a-a-a-a-cks. (Say it through your nose to rhyme with “qu-a-a-a-a-ck.”) I think in retrospect that I should have made an effort in this regard to serve some kind of drink, but even that can be a distraction. We are now in a living situation that limits our ability to host guests for that type of gathering, so this issue is dormant for now. I do want to battle the perception that no human activity can take place without food being available, though. In my view, this perception feeds into (pun very much intended) the idea that food is something that should be available at all times, in all places, and just hoovered up mindlessly.
For example, the Bible study I attended for several years started at 9:30 AM and ended at around 11:30. So it was not all that long after breakfast until not all that long before lunch. We had a lesson notebook that we were using as a basis for discussion plus a set of videos, and we also took time for prayer requests and prayer. There was therefore a very full agenda. It wasn’t a party, or a shower, or a meal. And yet there was this insistent idea that there had to be someone signed up each week to bring food. Why? It made no sense to me. There we’d all be, with our little plates of coffeecake or muffins or (from one very ambitious woman) breakfast burritos, sneaking in bites. It was food for the sake of food and was actually distracting from our lesson. When I was in charge of the class one year I did my best to discourage this practice without stomping on it too harshly: I said that I would not be in charge of any food (after being asked if we were going to have it) and that it was entirely up to the class to decide if it was needed. It still came in. What can you do?
I’ve seen this pattern over and over: a table full of food that’s completely unnecessary considering the time and place of the event. And don’t get me started on the idea that you have to provide candy! Why on earth would the registration table at an event need a big bowl of mini candy bars and Hershey’s kisses? Beats me. I would say that the group I’ve attended for several summers has the logistics ironed out well: We meet at 9:30 for an actual meal, a brunch, provided by the hostess. We spend an hour sitting around a table eating our food and talking. Then at 10:30 the plates are swept up and we start our study. Coffee or tea is available during class. Because we know that we’re getting an actual meal and not just snacks, we plan accordingly. We take turns providing food, we give it a proper place in our morning, and then . . . it goes away. On to other things!
In the end, all the recipes, and the timetables, and the mad preparations boil down to one simple principle:
- Think in terms of what will serve your guests.
That’s it. That’s the whole schemozzle. Every piece of your plan needs to be considered in light of the needs and reactions of your guests. And the mindset that will get you there is:
Be a “there you are” person, not “here I am.” That attitude will take you over the finish line.
The following chapters have been organized and formatted to be as easy to use as possible. You may feel that I’ve done a bit of overexplaining here and there, but I’d rather err on that side than on just assuming that everyone knows what I mean.
I hope the following guidelines and recipes will be a help to you in planning and executing an occasion that everyone looks back on with pleasure. Including you!
Did you find the above to be helpful and interesting? I’d invite you to buy the book, either on this site or through Amazon.
