In which I hit a limit

I used to find it really daunting to host holiday dinners for 10 people, and then I got comfortable with it. It's a lot of work, especially because we make everything from scratch, but it's how we do things here and everybody is used to it. I'm accustomed to making special dinners for 12 or 14 people and the kids are great about pitching in. This year, though, we leveled up, and it was A Lot. This year we were planning an Easter meal for 18, and the jump from 14 to 18 is bigger than you might think.

Let me be clear: I am genuinely happy that our kids all wanted to be here and that they like bringing their friends and girlfriends to our house. I love to see my SIL from the West Coast; I don't get enough chances to spend time with her. And yet I was a flaming stressball last week, because we live in a small and crowded house.

I imagined myself venting to my college roommates about my stress, and I knew exactly what they would say in response: go somewhere else, Jamie. So I rented a space owned by the city, and that worked out well. We now had enough tables and chairs and bathroom stalls for the number of guests we were expecting, which alleviated one source of stress. 

But the thing I realized yesterday is that feeding a homemade meal to 18 guests is past the point of diminishing returns for me: the satisfaction I get from cooking for that many people is outweighed by the immense amount of effort (and expense) required to get the meal on the table. It felt like I spent hours browning things: lamb cubes for the main dish, Brussels sprouts to go on the side. We couldn't roast the broccoli and the sweet potatoes at the same time because our oven isn't big enough. I chopped a whole head of garlic for potato salad and it wasn't enough. 

It worked out. My kids enjoyed the food, and there was enough of it. But we didn't do an Easter egg hunt for the first time in many years, because I was too tired to countenance it. It would have been better, I think to outsource some food prep and make the egg hunt happen.

It seems likely that we'll have more big gatherings in the future, as our kids get bigger and bring more friends and (I hope) add grandkids to the mix. I do always want to be welcoming. I also want to record some thoughts about how to make it work better in the future:

1. Buy a ham in addition to the lamb. Ham is cheap and easy, and younger guests who are skeptical about lamb stew may be happier with a ham sandwich. 
2. Ask more people to bring more things, and buy more prepared foods. Potluck is the way to go when the numbers get big.
3. Make desserts in big rectangular pans, so everybody can get a taste of everything. Desserts in round cake pans don't divide nicely into big numbers. If you slice an 8- or 9-inch round cake into rough squares so it yields more pieces, some people will just get crispy edges and some people will just get gooey middle, which is not how it should be.
4. Pay attention to this one, Future Jamie: don't make anything that requires browning, at all, even if you think you don't mind browning things. You don't mind browning things for 10 or 12 or 14 people, but browning things for 18 induces an alarming depletion of your will to live.

I made a version of a Nigella Lawson lamb stew that we all enjoyed. I put four onions, four carrots, a stalk of celery, and a bunch of garlic into the food processor, and then I browned the resulting mush in my Instant Pot in a mix of butter and olive oil. Elwood procured five pounds of cubed lamb stew meat, and I shook it in a bag with flour, paprika, salt, and pepper before I browned it in oil (in a never-ending succession of batches). I deglazed the pot with white wine. and piled in all the browned lamb with its accumulated juices along with the browned veggie mush. On top I added two pounds of small white beans, which I had precooked until they were just tender. For umami I added a big spoonful of tomato paste and a few healthy shakes of Worcestershire sauce. The beans needed a boatload of salt -- we're talking 4 or 5 teaspoons of salt here. I added about three cups of flavorful stock, and cooked it under pressure for 45 minutes. At that point I let the pressure come down naturally, and tasted for salt. I scraped up the browned bits from the bottom of the pot, and stirred them in. 

Pete posted a picture on Instagram, with the caption "don't know what was in this lamb-bean thing but it was exquisite."

We wound up only having 15 people after all -- one of Marie's friends didn't come, and Elwood's parents stayed home because his mother wasn't feeling good. It was a good day. I was grateful for a quiet night afterward.