I’m now going to attempt to leverage the power of the internet and “community’ by soliciting the assistance of my esteemed readers… Especially you female readers who have experience in entertaining.
This weekend, as mentioned before, is the annual Dinner Club At The Lake weekend. This years event starts exactly one day after the return of the LC from her two week hike through New Mexico, I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that she’s going to be somewhat exhausted on her return from the trip. Typically the wives in the dinner club go out the week before divide up the meals and figure out what good needs to be purchased and so forth and so on. Being the helpful man that I am I asked that I be invited to the planning meeting to figure out what our family was going to be responsible for.
No chance, quite simply a man is not welcome at a meeting of wives. I learned this hard truth when I crashed a lunch of theirs several years ago. Getting wind that the “gals” were meeting for lunch, and having the afternoon free, I invited myself along. Against her better judgment, the LC agreed, reluctantly. “This isn’t going to go well, I can feel it.” I was first at the restaurant, (being a compulsive ‘On Time’ guy, a trait not shared by the LC, or any other of the wives, I was first there by 20 minutes) and I secured us a table. The LC was next to party, then came each of the other women. To a person, each one arrived, saw me and got that frozen, “what the hell” look. After the lunch, the message was, NEVER AGAIN.
So, even in trying to help, I wasn’t welcome. The message this time was “We’ll tell you what to bring, don’t worry you pretty little head about it”.
So, hopefully you’re still with me…
Here’s the details and here’s where I need your help, I’m buying for 17 people.
1 Tossed salad
1 “other” salad, meaning potato, macaroni, something like that.
Snackage- brownies, rice crispy bars… oooh. S’mores bars. I’ll make those.
The other stuff I can handle. Here’s where I need assistance.
My plan, is to make a trip to Sam’s Club for the salads. I don’t know if any of you (Literary girl seems to have the most/best recipes) have ideas of easy to make stuff.. My issue with cooking is not the cooking part, I’m actually pretty good at that part. Where I screw up is portions. How much for 17???
Now assuming that I just go to Sam’s Club and buy an industrial size tub of something, how long will it last in the ‘fridge? The best day for me to shop is Tuesday night. Will potato salad, in a tub, purchased on Tuesday be edible on Saturday? Can you freeze it?
The Salad that I’m going to make is my mothers middle eastern salad with spinach, tomatoes, parsley, cucumbers, green onions, mint, and green peppers, diced fine with toasted pita bread crushed in it and a dressing of ½ olive oil ½ lemon juice and pepper. Now, anyone have ideas on portions? How much of this stuff to I need? Figure 8 adults, 10 kids.
Thanks in advance for your help folks!
3 Comments
August 6, 2006 at 11:38 pm
My thoughts:
The kids are not going to eat much of the green salad, as a rule. Possibly I’d do a macaroni salad for the other one as kids might be more apt to eat that over potato salad. You could be really fancy and buy a tortellini salad (costco sells some good ones). Kids like that, and adults, too. (Easy to make if you are inclined…) So, portions, I’d say one big bag of spinach with the rest of the ingredients added should be plenty. I assume you will have more than just salad, these are side dishes, right? People aren’t going to fill up on a green salad. 3/4 loosely packed cup size helping per person should be plenty, but don’t forget kids usually don’t love salad.
As far as buying ahead, personally I can’t think of much grosser than a big tub of potato salad, especially if it’s been in a fridge for a few days. Yes, techinically it wouldn’t go bad, but flavor? Ick. I’d say cough up the extra money and hit a nicer deli type store the day of and buy some from the case. If you insist on some pre-made concoction, at least buy it as fresh as possible.
I make a VERY easy tortellini salad. Cook the noodles, add some olive oil, chopped artichoke hearts, sundried tomatoes, sliced carrots and chopped broccoli. Very good, and kids love it. You could make that the night before and stick it in the fridge to chill.
And c’mon, how would you like your wife to crash a guys night? Think about it…you and a couple guys, drinking beer, watching a game…you’d want your wife to be there? It would certainly change the dynamic. I’m with the women on this one…stay away. Women are different when men aren’t around, the conversation is different, the feel is different. I assume it goes both ways.
I tried to email you back and after writing a lengthy novel on how to use flickr, it timed out and didn’t send, angering me too much to try again. I’ll try again tomorrow.
August 7, 2006 at 5:23 am
Thanks Jodie, I knew you’d come through! Sounds easy enough (except that I hate heart, but I know everyone else doesn’t share my aversion) I’ll make that. These are side dishes, another lady is making the main oourse. BBQ beef. Sundried tomatoes, I would assume that you mean the ones in the jar not the dried ones, and the hearts, in the jar as well?
I spent some time doing some blog upgrades lastnight and have Fliker and a subscription feed figured out!
August 7, 2006 at 2:04 pm
If you aren’t a big fan of them, buy some small jars. Trader Joe’s sells Artichoke Hearts in a can and Sundried Tomatoes in oil in a small jar. They also sell tortellini. I’d get two packages of the tortellini, two cans of hearts and two jars of tomatoes, although it might only take 1 and a half. Just go by how it looks. Chop it all up fairly small. You can get a bag of baby carrots and a bag of broccoli there, too. I like hearts and sundried tomatoes so much that I buy them in the huge jars at Costco.
All I was going to tell you about flickr was that I have a free account and always have plenty of room, but apparently that is because my camera doesn’t take huge pictures. I use the flickr uploader, where you just click and drag photos into it on your desktop and upload them directly to your site. SO easy. And the thing on my site is called a flickr badge. If you didn’t figure that out, I can tell you how to do it. I guess I could go look and see.