Food is expensive, but my first thought is that one aunt cooking for twenty people on their own is a shitty model regardless of cost. You were asking your aunt to run a restaurant for an evening. Your aunt probably got too old to do that much work, and the next generation decided that was a bullshit thing to force on a single person.
idk about you but my grandma would rather die than go sit on the couch and let someone else cook lol
ofc we help but she HAS to be there calling the shots
If it’s a forced thing I agree, but for some of us this is our time to shine. Cooking has been a hobby of mine since I was helping my own aunt with holiday meals as a kid, and I absolutely love making a big meal for a large group. I ended up doing the majority of the cooking for my ex husband’s family holiday celebrations, because I genuinely enjoyed it and liked giving everyone else the time to just be and enjoy the day.
All I’m trying to say is that, for some people, cooking a feast for their loved ones is one of the ways we show love. It’s a tradition that tends to exploit women, but that doesn’t mean the whole thing is trash. We should just be more mindful of how we navigate this holiday. I bet a lot of boys would fall in love with cooking like I did if they were included in the preparations like women are.
I agree with this. I love cooking and I’m a man. I do all of the cooking in my household. My fiancee never really learned how and I’d prefer to be the one who cooks anyway. I grew up in a very large family and I was the oldest so I learned a lot of things to help out like housekeeping and cooking. Boys really should learn how to cook. For me, it’s a fun creative outlet. It’s one of my favorite things to do.
Americans are just learning what us lower middle class families have been doing for decades already?
Welcome to the wonderful world of potlucks where aunt Nancy brings the same disgusting dry ham every year but it’s ok because uncle Mark brings the same potato casserole which slaps.
I thank the gods that all my aunts are great cooks. One Christmas, an aunt made the best goddamn pozole I’ve ever had in my life. I still dream about it to this day.
As the potato casserole aunt, you bet your ass it slaps. It had to unseat homemade painstaking mac and cheese to be my Thanksgiving dish
I went to a potluck Halloween party this year and honestly it was really cool. Everyone got super into making a dish to bring. I made apple crisp with really high quality apples from a fruit market by my family’s property in Amish country.
I’m going to a Friendsgiving potluck tomorrow and I’m pretty pumped. I was tasked with bringing the booze
My sister wants to host Christmas this year,
She made a list of who brings what
It goes
- bread roles
- salad
- other salad
- minor desert
- other minor desert
- sauces
- gravy
Then what I was assigned turkey and ham.
I think I’m in the right being annoyed that um expected to bring the meats to a hosted event I didn’t want to go to whike my wife is 8 months pregnant
The host makes the turkey. The gravy comes out of cooking the turkey. Who the heck cooks the gravy separate from the turkey? Where is this person going to get the turkey drippings and stock? That makes zero sense.
Combining turkey and ham of all things seems almost deliberate…
Yeah i think so too,
My wife said the same.
I work for myself so sometimes I think my family thinks I make lots of money.
I really don’t, honestly I would make more working for someone else, all I get is some flexibility
Your sister seems clueless regarding how to host these events. Explain to her what we mentioned in the comments here. The host cooks the turkey and ham in their own oven so when the guests arrive it is fresh out of the oven, the gravy also comes from the juices of that same turkey she cooks in her own oven. The stuffing/dressing she would also be responsible for it because that gets jammed up into the turkey that she cooks in her own f***ing oven.
Eh stovetop stuffing is popular enough that it’s reasonable to ask someone to bring it.
That said, general rule is requests can be like “dessert” or maybe a “cheesy casserole”. If someone has a dish they’re good at for potluck it’s reasonable to request that. But if you want specific dishes you should be doing a volunteer sign up
The time and effort economy is what gets a lot of us even more than the financial or attention economies on this one. Cooking is hard, but CHOOSING what to cook is even harder. And having to cover all bases and try to have multiple recipes finish somewhat around the same timeframe, I could hardly imagine pulling that off without some backup on the team to pull some punches for me in the late game
I’m fortunate, the only cook in the family who we have to check her recipes is my mother. We’re all great cooks, just when she picks the recipe it’s good like 15% of the time. The rest of us have fancy websites we get recipes from, she just picks the top link on Bing.
I’ve multiple times ended up as clueless as that when setting out to find recipes online, so I have learned that especially for desserts soups, and pasta recipes I really should just outsource that part of the process to my partner with pickier but also more discerning taste than me. I miss out on some onions or mushrooms here or there in savory dishes occasionally, but the couple of cookie recipes I now have saved always remind me that having a second set of eyes on that area of planning never hurts for me.
That, and I think a lot of families dont want to put 100% of the stress on one person.
Yeah and also why can’t the uncle do something for a change? The aunt used to be at home all day now she has to.go.to work AND cook for everyone?
Yeah, help out, other uncles! I brought wine, appetizer trays and coffee. And I did the dishes afterwards!
I saw a post recently on lemmy that said to include the boys in the cooking and cleaning instead of just the girls. So they get taught that it’s not only a woman’s job to cook and clean. I thought that was just swell
Potluck style is the way to go. In addition to what the other posters have mentioned, you get better food that way too: people cook the dish they have the best recipe for. People who are shit cooks can host or clean or w/e.
Get the best everyone has to offer.
I mean, everyone who wants to cook does at least one fish every Thanksgiving here. If they don’t want to cook, they at least have to grab a good pugliese or cheap bottle of Bordeaux
That’s a lot of fish
But why is it seven fishes?
I think I need new glasses, this is what I saw
And also cooking for 20 persons is incredibly hard, the spices and seasoning got exponentially higher as portion size increases, and cook time is wildly different than cooking for 4 persons. People these day just doesn’t have the time to master these skill.
Excellent point. Due to our highly processed food today many people have food allergies and food restrictions. In our family alone there are red dye allergies, nut allergies, gluten allergies and those who avoid high glycemic food.
I do occasionally cook for larger groups, and you need entirely different techniques. At home, you don’t need to account for the time the water spends between 70 and 100 degrees because that’s a minute at most. When you’ve got a hundred liters of water, that suddenly becomes very relevant. If you set your timer for 10 of actual boiling, your pasta will resemble porridge.
Also, I don’t personally own cooking gear to make food for 20+ people.
Why do spices scale exponentially?
I want it to taste my way and that’s too much spice
Yeah, I don’t think that’s right. You follow the recipe and just adjust for portion numbers, the spices don’t scale any differently than that.
Yeah they scale very explicitly in a nx line
Water contain(of the ingredient), size of cooking pot, that kind of thing. Of course it won’t be big difference, you just have to adjust accordingly, sometime more sometime less. “exponentially” isn’t a good way to put it but you get the idea. It depend on the thing you cook.
I do host thanksgiving for more than 20 usually, we do an all-comers meal, whoever wants to come to eat can. It’s fun and I enjoy it and yep everyone brings something but even so it is expensive for certain. Legitimately thankful that we can do this for everyone. But even when I was younger people coming to Thanksgiving brought something, is that not a usual expectation if you are going to a party? At least bring wine or ice or something.
I think it depends on size and relationship. Nobody brought anything to my grandparents (either side) until I started to. But it was always 10-11 people. Except when their same age siblings came, they’d bring something (much younger great aunt was never considerate of oma and opa). At my in laws’ we cook a dish. If we lived in town I’d probably bring a casserole, but even before we moved far away we still were hours away and you don’t want to leave a casserole for hours.
Friends though, always bring a dish except for the ones friend who has made it crystal clear that she doesn’t want people doing so because she’s insane and shows her love through elaborate meal planning. For her we just try to keep her liquor and wine cabinet overstocked and demand she let us help her with anything she wants.
My aunt always hosted but we always brought something to share, usually something that was precooked or didn’t need cooking, like salad or dessert or even just cheese and crackers for an appetizer or something. She still made a ton of food but she didn’t have to do it all on her own, and we all drove a bit to get there; we were the furthest I think at about 2.5 hours away. It was my favorite holiday; just food and family. But I am aware that my family is pretty functional as families go. I am very lucky.
Not a shitpost
pitshost?
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