costs of feeding guests - inspired by another thread

[ComeBackBarack]

I was looking at the Eat Well for Less thread in Telly, and some are shocked that the family was spending £150 on food for a dinner party for friends. To be fair I didn't see that episode...so I don't know how many they were catering for. But if there was 6 of us for dinner - starter, main, pudding, nice wine, chocs and cheese - that's easily be £150.

Does that seem too much to people?

When DH and I had more money, I'd easily spend that on entertaining. Now we're broke, I've found ways to have people over and spend a lot less money. I think ultimately it comes down to what you do and how. We spend less by cooking different types of food etc. Andultimately, entertaining well is far more about the atmosphere you create which I think DH and I have down.

But sometimes I do wish I could spend that kind of money. It's so much less work generally.

Surely it depends what you serve and where you shop?

You could feed 6 people generously with nice food with 3 x carefully chosen M&S meal deals for two and a couple of extra bits, say £50?

There was another episode of Eat Well for Less where they 'had' to buy 6 bottles of £30 branded champagne every time they had a dinner party. So the secret swap was for £5 Aldi cava that they all agreed was nicer than the champagne.

If it was this week's Eat Well For Less, then their approach to a dinner party appeared to be Deliveroo from 5 different restaurants. Iv'e never used Deliveroo so have no idea of the logistics, but that sounds very complicated and expensive and you would hope all the restaurants were next to each other and the delivery person was well paid if it meant them going round them all on a bike to collect - surely not?

Of course you could feed people well for even less with proper cooking - there are some really nice home cooked things that use quite cheap ingredients to produce restaurant quality food.

Such as pate on toast, salmon, veg and new potatoes if you can get the salmon on offer, a chocolate cream pot made using 30p bars of dark chocolate, cream and a few raspberries for example.

That seems a lot to me.

I catered for 6 people recently and it came to just under £100. Admittedly, we don't drink much so that helps but we weren't scrimping either and we had some portions to freeze after.

I agree the cost soon add up. i find it’s not actually the main element of the dish but all the extras, different condiments, soft drinks, nibbles, biscuits, chocolates or cheese board or a new hand soap for the loo. Then I tend to think ‘oh perhaps they would prefer decaf coffee, soya milk or peppermint tea (which they inevitably don’t) and so end up with lots of ‘just in cases bits.’ Also for us a dinner party is a bit of an occasion you don’t want the same old that you roll out week in week out, so I’ll go for a different recipe with ingredients that don’t just fall out the store cupboard .
So yes for me it does cost and that’s ok but if I needed to do it on a budget I could.