Reply to spontaneous hostesses (and hosts!) what are your secrets?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Wow, I never thought about how I do this, but I'll try to tease out what makes it work.

1. We keep the house pretty clean. Cleaning ladies twice a week, we never leave dirty dishes any longer than it takes to eat a meal (so we leave for work with a clean sink and go to bed the same way), the nanny leaves us clean play spaces at the end of the day, when we get out of bed we make the duvets/blankets look neat (same for kids), we don't have a lot of clutter or "stuff" and everything we DO have has a specific place.

2. We invite people over spur of the moment and DH and I will immediately split up. One goes home to meet guests, pour drinks, etc., and the other runs to the supermarket if necessary.

3. We always have certain things on hand. Various types of nuts, a box or two of crackers, a box of tortilla chips, baby carrots, edamame, couple types of cheese, whatever fruit is in season, ice cream, pound cake, a full bar, etc. What this means is that DH can be the one to go home and pour drinks, put out a couple of bowls of nuts, and then chat with people as he cuts up cheese and pears to put together a cheese plate for guests to nibble on while I'm stopping at the grocery store or pizza place to get the main meal (or ingredients for it). We also always have pasta and homemade gravy in the freezer because if you have enough kids over eventually one will be a picky eater who only wants pasta. I can pop over to the store to pick up meat and bread, bring that home and we can make meatballs, pasta and garlic bread pretty quickly. [/quote]

This is a nice breakdown! But I just have to ask: you can make meatballs [i]quickly[/i]?! You mean frozen meatballs, I'm guessing? I'm Italian and mixing, rolling, sauteeing and then saucing meatballs always takes me about an hour from scratch.[/quote]

When you have people over, everything takes an hour - meatballs are no harder than anything else. Dump the ingredients in a bowl (5 mins, with all the taking out and putting away of ingredients). Turn on pot to preheat it with a smudge of olive oil. (1 minute) . Roll all the meatballs (3 minutes, if you're slow). Throw them in the pot. Wash hands. Talk to guests. About 2-3 minutes later turn the meatballs. Get out the can of tomatoes (or if it's a weeknight, the bottle of good-quality jarred sauce) . Two minutes later, just pour the sauce over the meatballs. Cover and simmer for the next 45 minutes or so. As you finish, star preheating the pasta water so it's ready for when the meatballs are done. There's your hour, but it's only about 15 minutes of work.

It's a mindset. [/quote]

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