what would you serve at a dinner party
well that would have to depend on the uh number of people and the nature of the party fairly small parties with people that i know i tend to be a little bit more casual and i would tend to
okay
to uh serve things that were buffet style perhaps we'd have uh
oh i like those little little cocktail sausages in barbecue sauce or or maybe a sausage ball uh crackers and dips chips maybe uh
uh-huh
probably have some kind of a of a salad uh that's easy to pick up and spread
uh-huh
fresh veggies probably uh possibly uh blocks of cheese and chunks of uh deli meat
have to include some fruit of some kind i prefer berries uh like sugared grapes and things that are very attractive to set out on a on a table
uh-huh
a little bit more formal dinner party you might have just a little bit more formal setting i don't have a lot of formal dinner parties so i can't tell you a whole lot about that
right
but i tend to be very lazy and want to do what is easy but looks and tastes good so
yeah
ours would lean more toward uh i guess monetary concerns rather than the formality of the deal if if we were having a bunch of friends over if there were six to ten coming over we'd end up serving anything with chicken due due to its cheapness
uh-huh
uh-huh
and uh oh you can run a a a regular spaghetti or even a chicken spaghetti type casseroles anything that that can be spread over a large number of people for a few number of dollars
uh-huh
and uh oh if it's smaller and and for a given occasion my wife will will end up cooking a variety of of uh shall i say more fancy foods as it were but
i grew up in a in a family that that had a a few formal things but uh
my mother was deaf and and hung around the house a lot so she developed a uh a cooking habit that was just unmatched by most of her peers and we ate some very
uh-huh
good food and then large quantities of it and even to this day with the two of them uh retired and and none of the kids at home and
uh-huh
they still keep a large refrigerator totally full i i just can't imagine i mean even our refrigerator with a family of four does not have the food content that they manage to do so she still likes to to cook a large uh variety of foods um
uh-huh
my wife on the other hand comes out of the military type family and and they were always on the go and they never really had a a formal setting as it were and so she tends to cook a little more uh
informal type things and when we have friends over it's usually just for a uh a light
pretty much what we would eat anyway a light informal meal and they usually bring something a desert or a salad or whatever and uh
uh-huh
i do like the uh my wife's motto when she finds something she wants to experiment on she'll experiment on company because usually they're polite enough to eat it anyway instead of the
family you know so so we do get some weird concoctions on occasion that she'll she'll experiment on things she has a real uh nice repertoire of uh desserts and uh
uh-huh
uh-huh
i like to like to eat desserts
well
in recent years i have become far more conscience of conscious of balancing the diet and having healthy foods if i were having people over i would want
hm
healthy food to be one of the considerations most of my friends really would prefer a bowl of fruit as opposed to a big gooey cake
hm interesting
uh they would prefer fresh stick veggies as opposed to chips and dips although there are some hard crust chips and dippers uh
yeah
and i i'd like to have a little bit of nutrition content in the foods i'll be careful but for example about the kind of cracker that i pick to go under a spread
hm
i may be concerned about the number of calories that are going into the spread i know i watch my weight and i'm sure that most of my friends do too and i appreciate somebody being conscious of that when i go visit
so i do try to cook more healthy than i did even five years ago five years ago i let my palate dictate uh now i'm more conscious along with everybody else
yeah
yeah that's interesting that's an interesting discipline i haven't uh i i probably should pay attention to that i i now that i think about it uh it does seem to be a bit of a change in what i've been served at different houses over the years uh
about the kind of food uh-huh
uh-huh
uh-huh uh-huh
well there was a time for example that i would've made a big gooey creamy pie for dessert now now i may use an angel food cake with fruit and a light whipped topping
uh-huh
uh-huh hm
far fewer calories and far less cholesterol uh
and just as edible very balanced very good yes yes
uh-huh uh-huh and just as palatable i love peaches and strawberries and i sure take advantage of them in season
yeah that's that's a good deal
and uh as far as the the party snacks uh i may fix a trail mix or a caramel popcorn for snacking as opposed to what pure peanuts
uh-huh
right
yeah or or something else that that really is loaded with empty nutrients with empty calories no nutrition
yeah popcorn has got to be one of the the most filling and least uh you know bad for you as it were and it seems to be good in all those categories that they're rating these days
oh yeah it's a favorite uh-huh uh-huh
uh-huh yeah uh-huh
that's right
few calories and few well if you don't drench it in butter i guess
uh-huh well i tend to i i nearly everything i try to balance uh you can take everything to an extreme
uh-huh
right
everything to an extreme and i'm not going to take the flavor and the pleasure out of the food in order to make it quote healthy i'd rather die than eat terrible tasting food
right
yeah
pure oats
yeah yeah and there are you know you
people whose systems are accustomed to that kind of discipline can actually tolerate it much better than those who are not i know that when i began to add bran to my diet i had terrible bellyache until i until my system became accustomed to it
hm
interesting
and uh by the same token when my husband and i first married he was accustomed to a a greasy diet lots of fried foods and i nearly died then because i was accustomed to fresh vegetables and baked meats
uh-huh
huh
or broiled meats or grilled meats i prefer my meat grilled to fried anytime i may do a little stir fry or a little wok or something like that but i do not fry my foods that much anymore used to but i don't anymore
yeah
two reasons one it's just not that healthy and it makes my stomach upset second it's a big mess to clean up i'm not interested in cleaning up a mess
i'll say
yeah it's been a couple years we got rid of our deep fryer we used to have one of those little bitty baby fryers and we'd uh do everything from uh
uh-huh
oh yeah
uh
fondues to some other little uh meats even the uh French bread we used to actually do in in uh French toast as it were in the oils but uh now it's just more like a grilled piece of uh
uh-huh
uh-huh
uh-huh
uh-huh uh-huh
bread a a that's interesting i hadn't i hadn't really thought about the changes that have occurred i guess the whatever entity is moving us toward healthy foods is doing well the whole nation seems to be moving slowly that way
uh-huh
well of course now we're going to find out two years down the road that we've done something terrible and our body is going to
