I spent a large part of today shopping and cooking for tomorrow's lunch, after spending yesterday cleaning. I don't really like cleaning, or at least I infinitely prefer gardening, so asking friends around is a good incentive to do something about the state of the house occasionally. I like having a clean house when it's done, so I don't grudge my friends the effort, and anyway one of the most off-putting things I know in a host is when they grumble about the trouble they went to getting ready for you. A good host is like a swan. Even if it's paddling madly under water, all should appear serene on the surface.
The amount of cleaning people get depends partly on how well I know them, on whether they have been to the house before, and how messy their own houses are. I do make less of an effort for friends who have dogs running around their kitchens and wear their wellingtons indoors than for the pet-free with light coloured fitted carpets in their houses. Tomorrow's guest list includes two people on their first visit, one of whom runs a professional B&B, and when I dropped a tree stake off at her house after work as a favour she gave me tea out of a silver tea pot, and the other I don't think is a pet owner, though she does have teenage boys so must be reasonably inured to mess. Partly in deference to them, and because it needed doing, I did more than a quick wipe and vacuum, and hoovered a lot of cat fur off the curtains. The cats are already busy applying fresh fur to every surface. My list of things to do tomorrow morning, after various final bits of cooking and key things like cleaning the loo, ends with final vacuum, if time. I'm not sure there'll be time.
I never know how much food to do. It seems nice to offer choice. Nobody's a vegetarian (or at least if they are they should have told me) but not everyone likes red meat, or some flavours, so I ended up with a choice of main courses and puddings. I have a horror of anyone not being able to have what they want, so that means enough of both to feed everyone, if they should all go for the same thing. That's not a problem. The leftovers will keep us going over the weekend, and we can freeze some of them. I seem to have panicked in Tesco, as I really can't work out why I bought so many onions, but they'll keep. I did a blueberry cheesecake, and then a chocolate cake in case anybody doesn't really like fruit, or blueberries, or cheesecake. I spent years feeding fruit puddings to my sister-in-law, who is an extremely polite woman and never complained, before noticing that she never actually ate more than a spoonful, and the penny finally dropped that she hated apple crumble and much preferred chocolate.
I have done red cabbage, in homage to my Polish great grandparents, and because I like it and it goes with goulash, and improves with re-heating, as does goulash. The goulash was simmered for at least four hours, and is still tougher than I'd like, so that's going straight back in the simmer oven as soon as I get up. In recent years I have succumbed to the System Administrator's method, and now add passata. When I was growing up it never had passata in it, just maybe a spoonful of tomato paste. You need to put a lot of onions into a good goulash. Really a lot of onions. They should be an equivalent weight to the meat. And a lot of paprika. Then I made a chicken casserole, as anybody who doesn't like red meat or paprika will definitely not like goulash. I was relieved to be able to buy packets of free range legs and thighs, as otherwise I might have ended up buying non free range because it was too late to think of anything else. Shallots, mushrooms and snippets of bacon went into the chicken.
The chocolate cake is basically cooked chocolate mousse. When I was a child my mother made an excellent mousse, but nowadays I wouldn't dare serve raw eggs to people. The cake is made out of eggs, sugar, and cocoa, but the butter-free, flour-free vibe will be ruined once I've slavered it with cream and chocolate icing. The chocolate icing is from a recipe I copied out of The Times years ago. You melt dark chocolate with a high cocoa content and add warm double cream, and that's it. The cake recipe is from Delia, but I tried her chocolate filling recipe once and it curdled, a complete waste of good chocolate. I know that Delia has a particular place in the nation's affections, but I don't believe the temperatures she specifies for that cake filling.
I am not going to exercise my recently acquired skill with cheese straws, because I have absolutely run out of energy to cook any more food. They'll just have to make do with fishy things on rye bread and posh crisps. They'll get lots of dairy product in their puddings anyway. I have done a table plan, on the basis that 'sit where you like' produces enough dithering even when there are only four of you, and that people would rather be told what to do. It'll be fine. Even if some things are a bit rough and ready, they are all too nice to mind too much about it.
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