When you’re entertaining, you need to balance money, time and taste.  I just had a grad night party for my eldest and I won’t say it was the cheapest I could have done, but it was reasonable and balanced the time I had available with the money I had available.

My daughter wanted a “simple” barbecue, that is hot dogs and hamburgers. But we were inviting lots of adults, including a few vegetarians and a few who eat no pork.   So first off, I bought all-beef hot dogs. I also decided to buy preformed hamburger patties to save time since we had a few other things going on around the same time.  I decided to add some chicken breasts and a few portobello mushrooms as well.  The hardest part was deciding about how many of each thing to plan on for 45 – 50 people. I figured two hot dogs per person and figured on about half hot dogs, slightly more than half hamburgers, half a dozen mushrooms, and a large tray pack of chicken breasts. (Note: I marinated the chicken breasts in my favorite chicken marinade and split them into two bags. I had one bag left over at the end so just froze them in smaller packs of 2 breasts per bag with some marinade in each bag.  I also had leftover hamburgers, still frozen, and leftover hot dogs, easy to throw in the freezer for later, so those will all get used up.)  We cooked a bit more than we ate last night but had hot dogs for lunch and green salad with sliced chicken and the leftover mushroom sliced up for dinner.

The menu I ended up with was:

• hot dogs
• hamburgers
• barbecued chicken breasts
• barbecued portobello mushrooms
• vegetarian baked beans
• potato salad (homemade and brought by my niece)
• pasta salad with veggies (homemade and brought by my niece)
• Chinese chicken salad (homemade and brought by my girls’ stepmom by request)
• fruit salad
• green salad

For appetizers we had:

• hummus and crackers (brought by a friend)
• chips and salsa (brought by a friend)
• veggies wraps (olives, red peppers, cream cheese, spinach leaves, grated carrots)
• spinach dip (bought at Costco) and French bread cubes
• pretzels and crackers and various dips and cream cheese (my youngest talked me into some raspberry chipolte sauce we sampled at Costco and I had some wasabi mustard dip I’d bought a while back)

And I bought a large sheet cake for dessert. This ended up at about $1 per person and was far better tasting and looking than I could have done! For smaller groups, I would have made dessert but for larger ones this works out great.

Oh I also made two large relish plates for the burgers which included a head of iceberg lettuce, sliced onions, sliced pickles, and sliced tomatoes. Ended up with leftover onions and tomatoes but those will easily get used up in various things or I can always just chop and freeze the onions.

I haven’t added up the cost but my main point was that you need to balance the time you have availalable and figure out what things might make sense to buy pre-made. While I normally make our namburger patties, for a large party I felt good about my decision to buy the preformed ones. Likewise the spinach dip. But I bought fresh fruit and made the fruit salad based on what looked good and ripe at the store (strawberries, blueberries, pineapple, watermelon, grapes and nectarines).  A neighbor was kind enough to loan me some fridge space (as well as outdoor table and chairs) so I made the salad up in the morning and refrigerated it till the party started. I did the same with the relish plates for the burgers.

Oh, for the bean dish I took this four bean casserole recipe in the crockpot and modified it to use vegetarian baked beans intead of the pork and beans and then left out the bacon. It was just as delicious as the original I think and might become my new standard since it’s a bit healthier.

Any of you have tips to share for large parties? This was fun but the largest one I’ve done that wasn’t a total potluck, although I did have some help as noted.  I don’t have an extra frig or freezer as some folks do so the neighbors’ offer of their spare frig space was a lifesaver. Same with the tables and chairs I borrowed. Oh, we did buy plastic table cloths to cover all the tables so they looked coordinated by the time we were done!  We bought a dozen helium ballons and tied a few to each table.  We lucked out with fantastic weather and I think the party was a success.