I LOVE to host parties. Especially in the winter, when there are so many opportunities to gather with friends and family out of the cold and around a table full of warm dishes and good conversation. I have fond memories from childhood about all the winter holiday parties my mom would host, and I learned to cook by helping her with party prep every year.
Once I had my own home and family, I felt ready to step into my own host shoes. What I didn’t plan on was those host shoes needed to be cushy, supportive orthopedic shoes because I was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis at 25, just six months before my wedding. I can still use all the skills I have learned from my mom, but I had to make some adjustments so I can still host all the holidays I love without sending myself into a flare that lasts into the New Year.
The most important thing to me is being able to plan ahead so I’m not doing everything the day of the party. My pain increases the longer I stand, so if I spend my day cooking, I’m in no shape or mood to enjoy my company by the time my guests have arrived and the meal is ready to be served. It took some time to figure out, but here’s how I planned and prepared a holiday meal while making more of an effort of balancing my health with my love for cooking for a crowd.
About a month before the party, my husband and I began planning the menu. While his family doesn’t have any dietary restrictions, some of them do have taste preferences, my mom and I have some food allergies, and my psoriatic arthritis makes me sensitive to certain foods. Nightshade vegetables like tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, and peppers tend to flare my psoriasis. But when he suggested we serve Italian for dinner, I liked the idea and didn’t want to say no. I knew with a little bit of planning, I could serve a full Italian meal that would be easy to make ahead while avoiding too many nightshades for myself and allergens and taste preferences for the rest of the family.
In the week before the party, we pull out all our serving dishes and do a test set up in the kitchen to ensure we have enough oven space, outlets, bowls, serving utensils, plates, and flatware well before our guests arrive. If we find ourselves short on something, we have time to tweak our plan or locate what we need. This also requires us to clean and declutter the kitchen and dining room a week before the party, so we aren’t doing last minute cleaning the day of the party when I’m trying to reserve my energy levels. My husband puts the leaf in the dining room table while we do our test run, so we can clean and set the table in the days before the party to make sure we have enough place settings for all our guests. This means we can’t use the table for family meals, but I think having the table set in advance is worth the temporary inconvenience and our four-year-old loves the “picnic dinners” for a few evenings at our coffee table. I usually plan on ordering takeout the day before a party, so I’m not making a mess in the kitchen or increasing my pain before the party.
I find buffet style with more “create your own” options to be the easiest way to accommodate everyone. A plated meal stands out when one or two plates look significantly different from the others, and it’s always possible a guest I’m serving may have restrictions or preferences they didn’t share with me before the meal. A guest may feel awkward to ask for something else on their plate, and the last thing I want is for someone to leave my house hungry because they couldn’t or didn’t want to eat what I served! Letting people create their own plate from multiple options ensures everyone can have exactly the plate they want and feel satisfied when they’re finished. It also gives me a chance to sit down and rest while my guests make their plates!
For salad, we made a base salad of lettuce in a big bowl, and then had little bowls set out for salad toppings like cheese, carrots, onions, peppers, tomatoes, olives, and croutons. I bought a set of tiny tongs on Amazon with a different color for each topping. Having plenty of different colored tongs ensured no one reused the tongs in another bowl, so there was no cross contamination with the toppings my mom and I had to avoid. You can also buy different colored bowls and match the tongs to the color of the bowl. We washed and chopped all the vegetables the day before, so it was quick to dump all the toppings and salad in the serving bowls before our guests arrived. Next to the toppings, we had a variety of salad dressings and I separated and labeled the dairy free ones from the ones with dairy so my mom and I knew which ones were for us.
For the entrees, I made two pasta dishes and Italian sausages. I browned the sausages in my cast iron skillet early that morning, removed them from the pan, and then cooked onions in the same pan. A few family members don’t like onions, so they went into a separate bowl when it was time to serve. I put most of the browned sausages in the crock pot, added sliced green peppers, and covered them in an herby tomato sauce to finish cooking. Once they’re done cooking, I set the crock pot to “keep warm” and serve the sausages directly from the crockpot, saving us from needing another serving dish. All my guests like peppers and tomato sauce, so I knew that would be eaten by everyone. The reserved sausages were baked that morning, so I could have a sausage that wasn’t covered in tomato sauce and could just quietly reheat for myself later. If I was unsure if everyone liked tomato sauce and peppers, I’d have separated more sausages and just had sausages two ways with enough for everyone if there was a clear preference. We are a family who love leftovers, so cooking extra food just means more food for the days after hosting when the last thing I want to do is cook!
For the pasta dishes, I made one cheesy, tomato sauce pasta bake I knew would be eaten by all the kids in attendance and most of the adult guests. A pasta bake is a great option for a party because it can serve a lot of people and is easy to make ahead. It’s also easy to customize a pasta bake for vegetarians, meat lovers, kids, and more. Because we had little kids, I chose a smaller pasta shape that was safe for all the little kids to eat without their parents having to slice the pasta before serving. I assembled the pasta bake the day before, placed it in the fridge overnight, and simply put it in the oven an hour before the party so it would be hot and ready by dinner time. I think dishes like pasta bakes taste better when they sit and the flavors meld together, so assembling it ahead of time improved the taste and saved my energy levels the day of the party. The other pasta dish was a garlic and olive oil-based dish, so it was without dairy for my mom and without tomato sauce for me. The garlicky olive oil dish was a nice contrast to the cheesy tomato sauce and was enjoyed by everyone. This ended up being the only dish I had to work on right before the party, and I could set out all my ingredients the morning of so it came together quickly and could stay warm on the stove as guests arrived.
I also made two loaves of garlic bread, one with real butter and cheese and one with margarine and no cheese. These could be prepped before guest arrival, and slipped into the oven 15 minutes before dinner time so the bread would be hot and crusty as everyone made their plates. My husband sliced and separated these with different knives on different colored plates with a label of which one was dairy free. When accommodating food allergies and sensitivities, I think it’s important to verbally tell guests which one is which, have a written label, and make the dishes look so different that no one will accidentally take a helping of a dish they shouldn’t be eating. I want my guests to be able to relax at my parties, so including multiple visual cues helps them make their plate without having to work too hard to figure out what they can eat.
Ultimately, a party is for everyone to enjoy and that includes the hosts! Planning a meal that could be entirely prepared before my guests arrive meant I could enjoy my guests and not be standing isolated at the stove for most of the party. My pain increases the longer I stand, so breaking up the menu and party prep tasks into different parts I could work on or delegate in the days before meant I could save my energy the day of the party for the party itself. I want my kids to remember these parties with me involved, and not in the kitchen with a stiff back and a pinched face because I prioritized the food over myself and our guests. I can’t expect everything to go perfectly no matter how much I prepare, but to me, the perfect party means my guests leave my house full and with a smile on their face and I didn’t increase my pain to 10/10 to make that happen.
