Anyone planning a big holiday party?

[Claire]

What do you do? How many people? Is it a regular annual thing or something you're just doing this year?

I plan my big party of the year for the first Sunday afternoon in December. I joke with hubby that we can invite 30; we can invite 50, but 40 always show up.

I collect an "admission price" of a food/paper/soap donation to our local food bank.

Everyone brings some kind of finger food that we spread on our big dining room table and sideboard. I make a huge pot of Cincinnati chili. Every year I seem to realize I should have added one more pound of ground chuck because the pot looks like someone licked the bottom. Every next year I add another pound with the same result. This year I think I'm up to 6 lbs. I keep that warming on the stove with a nearby stack of disposable bowls and spoons. Hubby makes intoxicating egg nog and we provide lots of wine and beer and a partial bar (and of course plenty of NA drinks as well).. We start around 2 or 3 and last well into the evening. Everyone loves it, and they get to feel virtuous as well. We used to have it as a tree-trimming party, but when we went to an artificial tree we quit that aspect of it (moving the furniture to accommodate the big real tree was becoming too physically taxing), but I still have ornaments from all over the world from our travels that people brought us for this party (I've been doing it for about 25 years, in Hawaii, Virginia, Florida, on the road in a trailer, and here in Galena).

 

[Katie H]

The days of holiday parties are a thing of the past for me. I don't mind and am perfectly happy to glide through the holidays at my age.

In years past, I used to host huge Christmas parties. They were what you could call "Sweet Shoppe" parties. They always included at least 45 different kinds of cookies and bars and about 2 dozen varieties of candies. I began baking near the end of October and carefully froze most of the cookies and bars, along with some of the freezable candies. In the end there were several thousand pieces of sweet goodies on our table.

Speaking of the table...the table I used most often was our large ping-pong table. It held most of the serving pieces, which were a massive array of holiday motifs. I still have many of them.

I served a cranberry punch and had a separate table stacked with holiday take-out boxes so guests could take home a box of goodies for their families...or themselves. We usually had, on average, 100 attendees.

It was a lot of work and so much fun and I enjoy remembering it all. I find it amazing now, looking back, because at the time I had 6 children at home.

Now that I've written this, I feel the need to thumb through my recipes and make some of them this season.,

 

[CWS4322]

I have 14 people coming over tomorrow.


The menu is a smorgasbord.


These are served on different types of bread:


3 kinds of pickled herring
smoked salmon
smoked cod
gravlax
shrimp


roast beef
ham
liverwurst
deviled eggs
cheeses


The hot table has these on it (served after the cold dishes--not put out at the same time
vegetarian cabbage rolls
Swedish meatballs
Janssen's temptation
peas, a vegetarian scalloped potato dish, beans with bleu cheese and walnuts, potato-beet-herring salad, vegetarian potato salad, tomato aspic, minted peas, vegetarian meatballs, scrambled eggs with smoked salmon


rosettes, krumkake, secret kiss cookies, Alice cookies, brown sugar shortbread, leftse, peppernuts