Anyone else forgotten what hard work entertaining is?

[ConcernedAuntie]

Was talking to a friend on Friday afternoon and said to her “come round and watch the football at ours, I’ll do some food”. I don’t like football but I thought it would be great for DH to watch it with other interested people.

Had a quick think about what to cook and DH said he would go and get everything on my list – great as I was out Friday evening. Bearing in mind it would only be 4 of us, the bill came to nearly £80!

Saturday morning, got up and made two desserts. Decided that as I had done the housework on Thursday morning I had better have a quick whizz round with the duster and cleaned the loos, sinks. DH hoovered through again. Decided to get the table set and discovered a stain on my only large tablecloth so that had to be washed, dried and ironed. As it is probably 2 years since I used it, it was probably put away by my late, much missed MIL whose eyesight wasn’t that good. Getting the ‘best’ plates and dishes out I thought they looked a bit dusty as also not used for 2 year so they needed washing, ditto the ‘best’ glasses.

Prepared all the ingredients for the made from scratch curry and went for a shower and washed my hair.

Had set everything up to eat outside and about 4.00 it looked like it might rain and the forecast didn’t look great so we moved everything into the conservatory.

Started to prepare the curry and under-estimated the time it would take to prepare prior to putting in the oven for an hour so had only just cleared the kitchen when friends arrived. Left the rice simmering and poured the drinks. Lovely. Went back into the kitchen and the rice had boiled over all over the hob so needed to clean that before it dried on too hard.

Served up the food, was really pleased with the curry as I had not made that one before, and we had a lovely evening so all worth it.

Is it just me or does it take anyone else a whole day to cater for one meal for four people?

@coodawoodashooda 😂. Most of the curry recipes I make come from the HaIry Bikers Curry Book, bizarrely! It's actually really good. And most curries (in nearly every recipe I've read) are based around oil/ghee, onions, ginger, garlic and often tomatoes, all of which are very cheap apart from the ghee.

Day before yesterday I made a chicken curry using two very large chicken breasts and a veggie curry based around spinach and home made paneer which is ridiculously easy and cheap to make. The breads I made myself and again that was just the cost a bit of flour, yeast, sugar and yoghurt, again all cheap ingredients. Popadoms I bought a few weeks back when they were three packs for three quid and stuff like mint, bay leaves, cucumber are growing in our garden. Rice is super cheap too. Admittedly I had stuff like mango chutney in the fridge and I buy the spices I use most of such as cumin and ground coriander from the Asian supermarket in larger quantities.

This honestly isn't a smug 'feed a family of 8 on a chicken for a month' thread, just a few people commented how expensive making a curry is and it surprised me as it's one of the cheapest things I make, sometimes with chickpeas instead of meat which makes it better value again 😊. Plus as I often make it the day before and put it in the fridge, it's one of the most stress-free foods if we have people over as it just has to be reheated!

Anyway OP, sorry for the thread derail. I'm sure your food was delicious. I agree, we are a bit out of the habit of entertaining. Hopefully next time will be a little less stressful.

I keep meaning to make the yoghurt bread. Thank you pp.

I used to be an amazing host but health issues mean I can’t do what I used to. The biggest dinner I have cooked is Chinese New Year so multiple dishes for 16 people. It takes three days to shop, prep and cook though.

Get yourself a rice cooker, you can switch it on and leave it, Have some dishes you have cooked multiple times so you don’t need to measure out anything, be confident then it’s a breeze. Never try a brand new dish on the night as such. Far too stressful.

Casual dinners and I still do this a lot have a couple of different ice creams, fruit, choc chips. Sprinkles, squirty cream and get people to make their own sundaes.

Just a word about 2 fancy desserts - if you do make or buy two, please include one that isn’t slathered with cream! Quite a few people inc. me really don’t like it.

A close friend would almost invariably forget and provide two cream-slathered ones she’d spent a lot of time and effort over, so I always felt very bad saying I’d have to pass.
I do wish I did like it, since the things always look so nice, but it really does make me heave.

Might add that in my fancy-entertaining days I used to make them for guests though - a pavlova always went down well.