I Love to Feed People

I Love to Feed People. I have been feeding people (starting with my dolls) since I’m 6 years old.

My earliest cooking memory is preparing dinners for my dolls. When my mom was preparing dinner for our family she would give me a tiny portion of each dish for me to play with. I vividly remember making tiny meatballs that were “baked” in my Easy Bake Oven. When they were done, I placed them on small plates for my dolls, accompanied by little potatoes that were in reality the eyes from the potatoes Mommy was using. Alongside the meatballs and “potatoes” I’d add a few kernels of corn or a few peas to complete the plate. My dollies ate very well.

Then, as a teenager, I began actually learning to cook real food, not from my mother but from Julia Child. And I was totally hooked!. I started by feeding my parents. Then branched out to elaborate dinner parties for my high school friends.

In the early 1970s I enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu, London, and received my Grand Diplôme. I really just wanted to learn everything possible about cooking so I could prepare exquisite meals for my family and friends.

And then my sweet little cousin Diane (that’s how our Zeyda always referred to her when telling me something about her, as she’s a year and a half younger than me) made a carrot soufflé for a family dinner. It was so delicious that I asked for the recipe. When she told me that it was from Bon Appetit magazine, I had to subscribe. Until we moved into Ladybug, I had every issue from November 1978! Now I just get the digital version.

Steve and I loved to entertain, so I got to feed lots of people at our many small dinner parties and huge parties. Friends used to say that our house was their favorite restaurant. That made me want to feed people even more.

We moved to South Florida in 1982 and continued entertaining. A few people asked me to make hors d’oeuvre for parties they were having, and that was fun and lucrative.

Then we built a beautiful single home in 1987 that had a huge screened patio area and pool, that was perfect for entertaining. So our parties just got bigger. In the course of one year, we had 2 New Year’s eve parties for between 100 and 150 guests, a plated lunch for 60 guests to celebrate my Dad’s Bar Mitzvah (his father passed away when my dad was 9 so it wasn’t until he was 72 that he had his bar mitzvah), and a 50th Anniversary party for Steve’s parents with 175 in attendance. For a few of those big parties we even had the pool covered with a dance floor!

From all of that I learned the art of ordering rentals and hiring staff, but I prepared all of the food. Catering all of those parties taught me how to prepare most of the food in advance so I could enjoy my guests.

At the second New Year’s Eve party a good friend came up to me and stated “I want you to cater our son’s Bar Mitzvah next March”. I told her that we weren’t in the catering business. And she replied that we would be by then, and even if we weren’t, she still wanted us to do the catering. Those words gave me the confidence to actually open Affairs to Remember Catering.

In the early days our party size was between 20 and 100 on average. By the time we retired our parties ranged between 100 and 500 with a few for between 1,500 and 2,500!

And so for 18 years, until Hurricane Wilma forced us into early retirement, I got to feed lots and lots of people. I was in heaven! We had become the 13th largest caterer in the state of Florida and had a reputation that anyone would be proud of! Even after we closed our business I had people calling me, begging me to just do one more party.

There are times when I truly miss the show business part of catering. But at this stage of my life I don’t have the energy to cater parties for that many guests. Now I’m quite content to just feed Steve daily and entertain just another couple or two in our RV. But one thing is certain – I still love to feed people!!!