The Megastore Recommends: the too much food edition.

1. Leftover roasted vegetables. The people, we had a party on New Year's Day. It was wonderful. This historian's daughter, out of kind concern that I may possibly, sometimes, overreach in my menu planning, which makes the dinner potentially glorious but also exhausting, suggested that we have what Tom Haverford calls "apps and zerts"--appetizers and desserts. It was great.

"What are you making?" my daughter asked me, meaning for the party.

I said, breezily, "Oh, I'm keeping it really simple. I'm mostly laying things on trays. I'm putting out grapes, apples, some really good cheese and fancy crackers. I'm making this bean dip with really good chips. Creminelli salami and some olives and dolmathes and artichoke hearts. Also this thing my mom makes called Josefinas? that you spread on slices of baguette and toast? And roasted potatoes and roasted green beans. And for dessert lemon squares and these pecan squares and this ricotta tart I found on Martha Stewart? And ice cream cones for the kids."

She laughed. "Doesn't sound so simple to me."

I literally canNOT resist overdoing it. But it's true that the party was in fact a little simpler because I didn't have to cook so many things, as in: I had to turn on the oven fewer times.

these are the beautiful potatoes I
roasted. Or like unto them.

But because I made too much food, there were leftover roasted potatoes and roasted green beans. Roasted vegetables, leftover, are a boon when it's dark outside and you're hungry. So last night we had straight up leftover potatoes and green beans and olives, and it was delicious and perfect. I mashed a little gorgonzola and--let's be honest--butter into the potatoes. I roasted them in the first place with garlic and rosemary and olive oil and plenty of coarse salt. Delicious. And tonight, I turned those potatoes and some broccolini into a frittata with some raw baby Swiss. Perfection.

see? so pretty! and crunchy!

2. Leftover raw vegetables. I forgot to add to my overkill list of apps and zerts that I also cut up the prettiest array of raw vegetables that you ever did see and put them in a pretty dish surrounding a bowl of peanut pesto, which is very, very good. (Peanut pesto: either peanuts or crunchy peanut butter, some minced garlic, soy sauce, a drizzle of sesame oil, some honey, a little hot water to thin it down, and some black pepper.)

Orange, yellow, red, and purple carrots. Raw turnips. Fennel. Celery. Sweet peppers. There were, of course, plenty of these left over. Which I have been eating for lunch every day. At work, in the movies, at home. They are lovely, crunchy, delicious and virtuous. I defy you to find many foods that fit all of those criteria.

I may have a small categorical issue here.

3. Leftover bacon. In the category of "things I overestimated," you can add "the number of breakfasts I might cook for all the people during the holidays." This overestimation meant that I had a leftover package of very good bacon, just sitting there in my refrigerator, saying in all but words, what're you going to do with me? Aren't you people vegetarians? Well, that package of bacon had clearly not heard of my Bacon Exception. I'm not proud of it, but there it is. When you like bacon enough that you have a bacon policy, it's kind of nice to occasionally have a little at home, so you can make...

an excellent Rico's tortilla will
up the awesome in your already
princely breakfast. true fact.

4. A breakfast burrito. What with your small handful of leftover roasted fingerling potatoes and your stash of eggs, some grated Monterey Jack Cheese, and that bacon burning a hole in your pocket, you can make yourself the king of breakfasts, the breakfast burrito. Quick and easy, too. Just fry that bacon, drain the fat, slice up a couple of teeny potatoes, give them a good toss in the hot pan, then beat your egg with a little cheese and scramble it to the side of the potatoes. When it's all cooked, slide a spatula under the eggs and potatoes, and put your tortilla in the pan. I happened to have really good tortillas on hand (see "things I overestimated" and "the number of breakfasts," #3 above). Heat the tortilla. You can press it down with your hand and hear the fat in the tortilla sizzle as it heats. Flip it and heat the other side. Lay the eggs and potatoes on the facing-up side, and crumble the bacon. Slide the whole shebang onto your plate and add a little salsa. This is a breakfast that will stand you in good stead for the day of syllabus-consideration and instructional-activity-devising.

The last party.

We are having a party on New Year's Day, a dinner party, and a big group of family are invited. We started trying to have our dinner after Christmas, because the number of events multiplied by the enormous number of family connections multiplied by a factor of divorces/remarriages would knock the breath out of you if you tried to have a dinner before Christmas. At least that's what we've found.

This means, though, that after having baked myself unconscious, practically, I needed to dig deep within and contemplate making food for around thirty five adults and children. Come up with something to make, then a plan for making it. Shop for the food. Find a place to put it. Then cook it.

Truthfully, I love doing it. I've really enjoyed learning how to cook for a big party, making everything festive and delicious, and it's fun to have an occasion for trying things I've not tried before. Simultaneously, I've tried to figure out how to scale back a little--how to cook a lot because we need a lot, but not so many things, and not so many complicated things. This simplifying goes pretty well in theory, but in actual execution, simple tends to flower into fancy pretty quickly. Here's what I mean.

Awhile ago, whilst roaming the aisles of Target, I came across an adorable teacake pan:

It was marked down for some unknown reason, and is everything a person might want in a teacake pan and more. Of course I bought it. Have I made teacakes? No, of course not. This pan belongs to a parallel life, the same parallel life occupied by the several sets of teacups and saucers (and matching tiny versions, demitasse size) I also happen to own, i.e., a life I do not actually lead, but imagine myself leading with great vividness. It is a fine life, with leisure in it, and friends who also have leisure, because they come over for tea and cakes. Adorable little cakes, baked in a teacake pan.

Well, be that as may be. As I was thinking about what to make for our holiday dinner--perusing my previous menus, feeling generally uninspired, contemplating a menu of sandwiches and potato chips--I thought, well, at least I know what I'll make for dessert. Petits fours, that's what! That's right: I imagined anchoring my festive post-holiday meal, to which three dozen people were coming, with tiny little, labor-intensive cakes, for which I would need not only to identify a foolproof recipe (doesn't exist), but also master a number of techniques (not going to happen).

In my thoughts, I carried around the petits fours version of this dinner, with a hazy, vague entree and ill-defined side-dishes hovering around the tiny, unbearably cute dessert portion of the meal, for a few days. But shit, as they say, got real when I started trying to find a recipe, a made recipe, vouched for by other bakers, one that would not result in tears when the cakes came out of the pan, or when I attempted to cover them with a suave ganache. Petits fours, as it happens, are a pain in the ass. This is a truth universally agreed upon by all who have ever tried to make them. I myself tried to make them once, prior to the acquisition of the adorable pan, and they were a pain in the ass at that time, and a pain in the ass they remain, apparently.

Fine. I said to myself. I will make petits fours another day, when so much is not at stake. When I have leisure, and my friends will have leisure. And we will sit in the back yard under the cherry tree, and drink tea and eat cakes, and life will be beautiful. I.e., never.  Scratch that 25%-of-a-menu-plan. What next?

I Googled "New Year's Day dinner" and "New Year's Day buffet" and "festive holiday dinner" and came up with these two ideas: Butternut Squash and Sage Lasagne, and Tuscan Roast Turkey Breast. That led inevitable to this plan: two entrees, a lovely salad, fruit, roasted vegetables, and dessert, whatever it might be. I plotted out the shopping list and a basic scheme for cooking the food. I invited my daughter to come food shopping with me.

"What are we having for the party?" she asked.

"Butternut Squash and Sage Lasagne and Tuscan Roast Turkey Breast," I said. As soon as I said the words "Butternut Squash" and "lasagne," I knew it would not do. I knew that half the people coming to the party would eat it. But I knew that the other half of the people would find it repellent and vile, in large part because half the people were children. Why should I make a dish that I knew children would hate? Why?

"That sounds..." my daughter hesitated.

"...awful, right?" I knew it. I knew it.

"Yeah, I tried, but I can't find a way to say that sounds good," she said. Menu revised: vegetarian lasagne of the more traditional kind.

Does this menu sound simplified? Well, maybe not. I am cooking parts of it on three successive days. For instance, I have made a cake today already. I've also made the lemon curd that goes into another dessert. Tomorrow I will make yet another dessert. That's right: there will be three desserts. In my defense, I believe they will be delicious. And at the end of the affair, that will be the last of the holiday cooking, and we will begin the rigors of the new year. The end.

Analog days.

Staying wired is a little bit of an addiction, as it turns out, but I'm getting there. As evidence, let me just cite: yesterday.

Yesterday was another episode in the continually unfolding story of the visitors, the enormous family, the babies. Through a frenzy of inviting and coordinating, we managed to have so many people were over for dinner, it boggled the mind: all my kids, except soccer coach son, and their significant others, where relevant; all the historian's kids and their significant others, except his oldest daughter and her partner, who live in Washington; all the grandkids, an aunt, and a niece. I think it came to 18 adults and a batch of kids.

The historian and I know how to throw these parties by now. We can do it unconscious, practically. Usually, I make a menu, a shopping list, and a flow chart. The historian gets the house together and I cook. So yesterday, I got up, started a batch of bread, set some butter out to soften (for shortbread), took running son to school and threatened him and college daughter with their lives if they didn't clean up the basement to a level at which I wouldn't feel humiliated if people went down there. Then I was off to do the food shopping.

I was back by 10. Without checking e-mail or participating in any other computer related activity, I got to work. I roasted fingerling potatoes with rosemary and garlic. I marinated a flank steak. I made an orzo salad with sundried tomatoes, kalamata olives, radicchio, toasted pinenuts and a balsamic vinaigrette. I made croutons and a dressing for a green salad. I made a custard to chill and be frozen into ice cream. I baked two kinds of shortbread--pecan and cacao nib.

That was all before noon. Also, Miriam, Evie, and their mom came over midmorning to hang out and keep me company. We had some lunch and chilled for a little while--I read Miriam a couple of stories, The Cut-Ups and The Cut-Ups Cut Loose. My daughter set up a little tipi in the backyard for the grandkids to play in. Miriam gave the dogs what-for.

In the afternoon, the historian came home from some morning writing and transformed the house into an elegant vibrant party locale (which is its true soul, always lurking somewhere under my slovenly housekeeping, but never mind). I made a mango-blueberry crisp and cut up two pineapples and sprinkled them with just a little mint sugar (that's just sugar pulverized with mint leaves--it's fantastic on pineapple). I baked the bread. We started a fire to grill the steak; we got the ice cream maker ready to go (this is the hand-cranked one). I dressed the salad and laid all the food, dishes, utensils and glasses on the table.

It was a wonderful day, and when people came around it was even more wonderful. Miriam and Carter played a vigorous game of Peter and the Wolf that somehow involved a dragon. Dogs raced round and round the kids. Everyone got reacquainted and we ate almost all the food. People lingered.

I admit I checked my e-mail once during the day, but I feel find about that. Mainly it was a beautiful day and evening. At the end of the day, the historian and I laid around and congratulated ourselves on another great party. All day long the doors stayed open; animals and kids wandered in and out freely. It was convivial and lively. I felt connected to my world--not so worried about any other world. As the party wore on, the historian and his son spotted a big hawk flying over the field in the back (no doubt looking for some of the mice I released last winter). It's going to be a great summer, I can already tell.