Monday, May 3, 2010

Entertaining, the lazy faire way

No, that's not a misspelling. I'm not talking about laissez-faire as in fancy economic theory with a fancy French name. It's just my silly franglish label for doing the least possible amount of work to get the best possible results. In my previous life it would have been phrased "If you want something done efficiently, assign it to a lazy programmer."

When I started this blog I had hopes that I could pass on some information that someone, somewhere might find even marginally useful. Since goodness knows I know jack-all about sewing I figured I could talk about what people say I do well. Namely, throw fabo parties. I even wrote a post all about The Zone of Effortless Entertaining

And haven't written a word about it since. But I've been mulling and thinking and have decided two things:

1. Effortless Entertaining, although beautifully alliterative, is not the correct description.Because seriously fantastic parties require serious amounts of work. I really mean low stress, freak-out free, ulcer-less, sans meltdown, with all your hair intact and the same number of gray as you started. Yeah? Ok.

2. I can't do that in a single post. In fact, I can barely talk about doing it in a single post. This started out as a post about mise en place and four paras in I'm still explaining what I'm going to say. So I changed the title and we'll mise tomorrow.

Here's what I propose to do. I'll spend some more time wrapping my pea-brain around what it is that makes a low-stress party. At this point Eric and I have done these enough times that I have to actually think about what it is we do. And sleep-deprivation has lowered my IQ by enough points that my planning skills are currently between bright golden retriever and dull chimp. There will be dredging involved.

With the pea-wrapping underway, and with the help of a ridiculous amount of written materials left over from party days I'll start putting together a few posts here and there that cover the main ideas. And I'll even try to make some of them relevant to everyday, regular cooking and meal planning (see mise en place tomorrow). 'Cause I used to be able to do that, too, and maybe it would also be useful. And then once the posts are in place I'll write something to sort of tie them all together and walk you through throwing a party people will talk about for years.

And maybe share some funny, silly stories like the time we got a red-meat-avoider to request veal.

That was at this party.

4 comments:

Mary said...

I don't even know what's supposed to go in each of those glasses, much less own that many!
But I do remember your Superbowl party of 2003. MANY fewer glasses to keep track of may have helped with that.

auntninn said...

Mary, we rented the dishes for that party. Another great secret. :)

But I think we might own close to that many wine glasses now that I think about it...

Dr. Fun (AKA Sister) said...

Holy shit at the glasses! You can't leave that party sober if they're all for different liquors or wines! I'm looking forward to your tutorials. I don't cook at all (ask me how my pinky-tip ended up in the pot with the boiled sweet potatoes) but my hubby does (Japanese hibachi chef with knife twirling and all) and I like telling jokes, so it works. Eagerly awaiting the next post...

auntninn said...

I should have included the disclaimer that no one drove home from that party. Everyone either walked across a field or stayed at the house. :) Also, when we do a wine pairing we don't pour a lot of each one.

And @Sister - wow! A pinky tip is now how I would season sweet potatoes. But I hope the stuff I post will be useful to you.