Feasting on friendship
There would be five of us for dinner – one more if she could get away from work. You know me enough by now to know this would be the source of much anxiety. And as is also my tendency, I would make enough food for three times as many as were coming.
Nine months after a bunch of us were sacked from our production jobs at public TV, we decided it was time to see each other and get caught up. Meaning well but having learned nothing from my years of hosting dinner, I opened my big mouth.
“Come over here,” I texted all in caps for happy anticipatory emphasis. “I’ll make dinner.”
And so began a couple of weeks of preparation. My search for a menu trained my social media algorithm to show me nothing but “easy fun meals.” After settling on something in the fajita family, I was shown enough soft taco and dips to cover my dining room table, and then some.
Planning the shopping list was easy; deciding how much to buy and to cook was not. Four of the five guests were much younger than I, and the fifth is vegan. And I don’t eat much when I spend the day cooking. A sane hostess would balance the hearty appetites of young people with the restraint of a vegan and of me. But I did not approach this meal with any sense of reason. I rolled up my sleeves and set to work cooking enough to suggest that my guests were ready to strap on the feedbags.
A question haunted me: What if there was not enough food on the table? The voice of my beloved grandmother rang in my memory.
“I know how to stretch the meat if I have to,” she would say. “We don’t want anyone to walk away hungry.”
At the store, I held one package of soft tortillas, counted them and then tossed two more packages into my cart. In the rice aisle, I decided to cut corners using the microwaveable stuff. Would three pouches be enough? I conjured a scene of a few grains of rice at the bottom of the bowl as my guests sat there, dejected and starving. I bought four pouches.
You’d think I would have learned by now. Each time I’ve hosted meals at my house, I’ve made far too much — misjudged appetites and also my cooking. Considering my middling culinary skills, who really is going to be reaching for thirds? Or even seconds.
And yet, I overindulged my need to feed. Deciding the corn dip wasn’t enough, I stopped by Chipotle to get some of their guacamole. A guest was bringing cake, and I decided that to serve it without ice cream would be an unforgivable lapse.
By the time we sat down to eat, every inch of the table was covered with a plate or bowl. Once again, I’d overshot the room and made too much.
When you add lively conversation to the mix, you realize that a meal of friends seeing each other for the first time after a long time, it’s not really about the food. There was hardly a divot in the serving bowls.
As my friends were getting ready to leave, they helped to clear the dishes. I offered take-home containers but they declined — everything but the chocolate cake.
That night, they all texted their thanks.
“You’re a great host,” one guest said.
I’ll take that as a compliment — if not for the taste of the food, then at least for the quantity.