Cookout

This will be a big weekend for us—Joshua and I will host a summer cookout tomorrow night.

We have to hold the cookout at my parents’ house, but my parents do not mind.

Josh and I hosted a cookout last summer, too, but this year’s cookout will be bigger because we will be hosting my brother’s friends as well, making this year’s cookout a “Welcome Home” party on his behalf.

We are keeping things as simple as possible: we hired a caterer to prepare all the foods except for the grilled meat and seafood, which we will do ourselves. Accordingly, the caterer will supply a variety of hot and cold appetizers, two kinds of garden salad, two kinds of pasta salad, two kinds of cole slaw, two kinds of potato salad, two kinds of fruit salad, twelve varieties of breads and rolls, five flavors of sherbet and six varieties of petit fours. The food will all be homemade, of the finest and freshest ingredients.

The caterer will also handle the serving tables and linens, and the dinnerware and the glassware, and the seating, and will be responsible for setup, takedown and disposal. There will be six catering staff members on hand throughout the cookout to attend the food and beverage tables, freeing us to attend to our guests.

We are taking care of the meat and seafood ourselves. We had fresh salmon flown in from Alaska (it arrived this morning, and my brother has already picked it up), and we ordered chicken parts and steaks from a butcher (for pickup tomorrow).

Because we hired out so much of the work, tomorrow all we will need to do is to prepare the lawn, await the 3:30 p.m. arrival of the catering crew, and direct them where to set up.

We have saved ourselves days and days of exhaustive preparation, well worth the expense, I believe.

It should be a great cookout.