I’ll be honest—posting this is giving me so much stress, because I’m afraid of being judged. Afraid of being called both low class and wasteful. Afraid that people will see this titled “fancy party” and then criticize it because we used disposables, or because the food wasn’t plated fancily enough.
I’m afraid people will roll their eyes at it and be super critical of the food photography. But that wasn’t on me. I was so busy running things and making everything happen that I didn’t tell the photographer when to photograph different things—so he took some really not-great pictures of the food when it was already being served, or during the serving, when some people had spilled rice on the table. I’m afraid people will say the food doesn’t look appealing because, honestly, meatballs can look weird when they’re in a big pan of sauce and not plated nicely.
And honestly, there’s a part of me that’s ashamed and saying, “You call this fancy? How can you be so stupid? It’s not nearly as nice as the parties your friends threw.” Even though I did this very much on a budget—and I’m glad I was able to do it for such a large crowd without needing to take out loans to cover it, or hoping to rely on gifts given at the party to make up the cost, the way many people around here do.
I’ve literally posted this and saved it to drafts four times already—and that’s after taking so long to write it up. I’m dissociating so badly right now from the fear of what people might say or how they might judge me.
But you know what? We loved it. The guests loved it. And my pocketbook loved it. So I don’t need to justify it or prove myself to anyone.
I threw a big party for about 100, and it was a blast and really beautiful. I had a generous relative help pay for a big chunk of it, which made it much easier on the pocketbook. Not everything about the party was cheap, I’ll admit that, but it was a choice I made for various reasons, and the generous relative’s contribution made that possible. The most expensive part of the party was renting the hall and photography (which I ended up being quite disappointed by, unfortunately), but the rest was done fairly frugally. It was a full multiple course sit-down meal with music, a dance floor, activities, and more.
Here’s what I did to make this party a blast, without needing to spend so much. This is part 1, the food. Part 2 is coming soon.
Preparation & Shopping: How I Saved on Ingredients
The biggest money-saver was self-catering. Self-catering meant I could make the party as inexpensive as I wanted, using cheaper ingredients, and avoid paying for the expertise and time of a caterer. I love cooking and feeding people, and I’ve worked selling takeout in the past. Over the years, I’ve picked up plenty of tips and tricks to make good food without spending much (many of which I’ve shared here). There’s also the advantage of having a spare freezer, a large fridge/freezer combo, an extra-wide 6-burner 90 cm oven/stove, and some really large pots that helped when I was making and selling takeout food (before my back issues from EDS became more intense).
Additionally, I’m quite good at multitasking in the kitchen. I know that catering is not something everyone can do, and I acknowledge my privilege in being able to manage it. But, everything came together for me, and I made it work—though I must admit, the back pain after was intense, and I was still dealing with lingering discomfort weeks later.
To make the catering as affordable as possible, I did intense comparison shopping. Comparison shopping is always helpful, but when you’re cooking for 100 people, small differences in price add up significantly. I put much more effort into this than I normally would, and it was worth it.
Two local grocery chains tend to be cheaper, but within those chains, some branches are more affordable than others. One, which I’ve referred to as the “R store,” is closest to me, and the other, called the “O store,” is the second option. The R store nearby used to have ridiculously good sales with prices as low as $0.12-$0.25 per pound, but those sales haven’t happened in years. Recently, I visited another branch of the R store near my physical therapist’s office and found prices similar to what I used to find at my local R store, which got me wondering if the price difference would make it worth the extra time and gas.
I had to pick something up near that cheaper R store, so I made sure to do my shopping that day. First, I made a detour to the O store branch near that R store and took pictures of everything I needed for the event, without actually buying anything. Then, I went to the R store and purchased the cheaper items, comparing prices with what I’d noted earlier. Afterward, I went back to the O store to buy the items that were cheaper there. It was a little bit of a hassle, but the money I saved made it totally worth the tiring day, since there were significant price differences between the two stores.
The Menu
Appetizers
For the veggies, I went entirely based on what was in season and cheaper, as well as what I could make easily in large quantities. The only thing I’d planned on in advance was green beans, since I could get them frozen for only $1.70 per 800-gram package (1 3/4 lb), which is a terrific price for a super simple and easy veggie to make.
The veggies were divided into two different portions of the meal: an appetizer course of dips, salads, and soups, and others served together with the main course. The appetizer course had the dips put out on individual tables, and the salads and soup were buffet-style.
For the appetizers, I had:
Dips and Spreads
Eggplant, 3 Different Ways
I decided to go with a few different eggplant dishes since they were in season and cheap, and I had some great recipes for fancy-looking eggplant dips. Additionally, eggplants cooked in advance freeze well, so it would take pressure off me on the day of the event. However, I regret this because I didn’t take into account how much water eggplants lose during cooking, or how much they shrink. Even though I bought a lot of eggplants, I still didn’t have enough to make enough for every table to have all three dishes — some tables only had one or two of the options. I also only realized most of the way through that all my eggplant dips had tahini.
- Eggplant carpaccio topped with pomegranate seeds and chopped parsley.
- Roasted eggplant salad – baba ganoush. I made mine with tahini and scallions.
- Roasted eggplant topped with tahini, chopped peppers, and parsley. I just cut mine in halves, roasted them in the oven until soft, then charred them for a minute or so on my cast iron grill pan. Then I topped them and voilà.
Garlic Dip
I roasted a bunch of heads of garlic, then blended them up with mayonnaise, salt, and pepper, and it was really delicious. However, it was a pain to make. I didn’t realize how sticky the roasted garlic would be, making it difficult to peel. I’d skip this in the future.
Hummus
I could have made some myself, but that would have been a lot of work for something that might not taste as good as the store-bought stuff and wouldn’t save that much more money. I compared prices and ended up buying a large container from the O store.
Matbucha
This North African tomato pepper dip is popular locally, and although it is a lot of work to make and not very frugal, I chose to buy it ready-made. I bought it from the O store as well.
Soups
On a buffet table at the side of the hall I had two types of soups for people to self serve. I chose soups that taste delicious and are easy to make in large amounts.
Tomato Soup
I made tomato coconut curry soup. It is easy to scale up, and is essentially just tomato paste, water, coconut milk, and curry powder.
Blended Potato Fennel Soup
I don’t remember how exactly I made this, but it was with potatoes, fennel, garlic, onion, and probably some other things. To blend such a large amount I used a blender stick in my huge pot.
Salads
The goal with the salads here was things that were easiest to make, with seasonal produce. I used my mandolin when possible to help with the slicing.
- Coleslaw
- Sweet and sour cabbage salad with pomegranates
- Cucumber, tomato, and pepper salad
- Fennel salad with mint
- Cucumber salad with mint
You’ll notice only the cucumber tomato salad needed chopping, everything else was just mandolined easily.
Entrees
I wanted to make three types of animal proteins, but I needed to do it as cheaply as possible while also keeping the workload manageable (since I was self-catering for 100 people and have limited time and energy!). Here’s what I prepared:
Meatballs:
My daughter requested meatballs, which turned out to be the most labor-intensive dish I made. Thankfully, my sons helped me, so it wasn’t all on me. They also freeze well, so I could make them in advance and then rest before tackling the rest of the work.
To keep costs down, I stretched the ground beef with TVP (textured vegetable protein), which is cheaper per pound. The ground beef was $4.50 per pound, which is a steal locally. I also added grated zucchini (as I explain in my zucchini trick post). The zucchini helps make the meat go further, keeps it moist, and adds extra flavor without anyone being able to tell it’s there. Even my zucchini-hating kids love it this way. Plus, it keeps the meatballs gluten-free and egg-free.
I spiced them with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder, and boiled them in tomato sauce made from watered-down tomato paste with onion powder, garlic powder, salt, basil, and pepper. The lesson I learned while making these: Even if your pot can fit it all, don’t overfill it, because the tomato sauce at the bottom of the pot can burn while the top cooks, especially when you can’t mix the pot until the meatballs are fully cooked. I ended up with 16 pounds of meatballs.
Chicken Wings:
Chicken wings are one of the cheapest animal proteins, even though they’ve got a lot of bones. I’ve shared this calculation before here. They’re great for feeding a crowd because they’re both easy and affordable. I bought 20 pounds of wings and divided them into large aluminum pans, then poured sauce over them and cooked them.
One pan used sweet chili sauce, and the other was cooked with soy sauce, date syrup, and garlic powder. The hardest part was making sure they were crispy, so I cooked them fresh on the day of the party. After cooking them in the sauce, I poured off the juices, mixed them around, and re-crisped the non-crisped parts.
There was minimal work in cooking 20 pounds of wings—aside from checking for feathers and making sure they were crispy! I bought the wings for $1.00 per pound at the R store, which was cheaper than the usual $1.30-$2.00 per pound.
St. Peter’s Fish:
I wanted to provide a non-meat option, so I served St. Peter’s fish fillets. Locally, they’re one of the more reasonably priced animal proteins at $3.35 per pound, but at the R store, I got them for $2.45 per pound. My friend Babs helped prepare these, and while I’m not sure how long they took her, they were baked in large pans with layers of fish. I think there were about 15 pounds of fish.
Side Dishes
For carbs and fillers, I debated what to make since meatballs taste great with spaghetti, but I wanted to keep the party as gluten-free as possible. This was both because there were gluten-free guests attending and because I wanted to be able to enjoy any leftovers without worrying about gluten. (Of course, there’s also the fact that I prefer to work by taste instead of recipes, and I can’t taste gluten.) Since there needed to be bread at the event, I decided that the bread and the cake at the end would be the only gluten items served.
Rice
I ended up making rice as my main carb to go with the meatballs. I made yellow rice. I also turned part of that rice into majedara (the spelling on my blog is inconsistent with this food because dang transliterations) essentially using a combination of my two posted recipes, using black lentils instead of brown (I think they taste better and look fancier), yellow rice as the base, and the spices from the former recipe (but without the root veggies). I got lots of compliments and requests for my recipe for the mejadera. This also provided a vegetarian protein option.
I learned an important lesson making the rice, though. I baked it in the oven and decided to “save time” by using really huge pans that fit nearly a kilo of rice in each one, but they really cooked terribly. I ended up with rice that was hard, and when I added more water, it ended up perfect on the top and mush on the bottom. So, I was only able to salvage about half the rice. Don’t do what I did—stick to a more normal amount of rice baked at a time (no more than 4 cups per pan).
I had planned on also making plain short grain rice, but ran out of time, and it ended up being fine; we didn’t need it.
Green Beans
Frozen green beans with garlic and salt and oil baked in an aluminum pan was easy. I bought the frozen green beans on sale which made this also extra low pricing.
Antipasti
I took the vegetables that were in season and cheap- carrots, sweet potatoes, fennel, and zucchini and roasted them. Antipasti is easy, because you just cut things into wedges, pour oil and salt and some spices- in my case I think it was thyme and garlic and salt, and roast them until soft. I baked them separately on flat trays and then served them arranged by type in a large aluminum pan.
Drinks
Getting drinks for a large crowd is expensive so I did the most price comparing here, between the O store and the R store.
I decided to keep the costs down by going with mostly bottled water. I chose the cheapest water, filtered water, which is cheaper than spring water.
I got RC cola which is the cheapest Cola between stores. Yes, not name brand, but fortunately in my area its common enough and people don’t turn up their nose because it isn’t “real Coca Cola”.
Lastly, I bought a large amount of seltzer, some of which is flavored seltzer. This is a bit fancier than just plain water, but cheaper than soda.
I have issues with fake sugars, and I knew we’d be taking home leftovers, so I didn’t buy diet soda, but other than the RC everything was sugar free naturally.
Desserts
For desserts, I splurged and bought donuts from a bakery. This wasn’t cheap but it was an exciting treat.
My daughter baked a large cake at a neighbor’s house.
I also put out some chocolates that I bought on sale.
To Sum It Up
In addition to everything else mentioned, I also bought rolls from the bakery.
The only gluten at the entire party were the rolls and the donuts and the cake. When my brother in law with celiac asked me what he could eat at the party and I told him that he could eat everything other than those 3 things, his eyes lit up; I hadn’t seen him that excited in a long time.
As someone who can’t eat gluten and is so used to going to events where there might be a few things I can eat but most that I can’t, it was so fun to have a party with everything available to me. No one seemed to miss the gluten, especially because I didn’t make any foods that are supposed to be gluten, but with a gluten free alternative that isn’t popular among gluten eaters (like if I’d served gluten free pasta or breads).
I brought home the leftovers, freezing what I could. We had what to eat for some time. And because it was all gluten free, I could eat it all. The serving bowls from the tables were tossed because I couldn’t ensure they were gluten free because of the rolls, but the stuff on the buffet tables were clean and came home.
I had budgeted $500 for groceries, but I came in well under that by my frugal shopping. That works out less than $5 per person for a fancy multi course meal.
I got lots of compliments, everyone had a nice time and they loved the food, asking me for recipes. I love feeding people and seeing people enjoy my food made me so happy and gave me such satisfaction that it was worth the backache and exhaustion for the next few days after the party.
There is another post coming about everything else from the party aside from the food.
What is the largest party you ever threw? I assume for most of you it is a wedding. How much did you pay for your largest party and how many people were there?
Do you enjoy cooking for people? Have you ever or would you ever cook for this many people? What would you serve them if you did?
