Invite Criteria

The sign of a successful party is a totally trashed kitchen after all the guests have gone home. My friend Lynn, who I have co-hosted a Christmas party with for the last ten years, is a more-the-merrier-type-person so this year we were very merry. Thanks to some dear friends who were not ready for the party to ended and got the whole thing cleaned up in record time and still had time to visit and rehash the party while sitting in the living room.

I have a history of giving Christmas parties with friends that become staples of the holiday season. When I lived in Washington I used to give a big party with my friends Tom and Chuck. We would rotate whose house the party was at every year. It started as a way to get together with our close friends and eat some really good food.

That party was where I developed my tenderloin black bean chili recipe. It started out as the way I used up left over catering tenderloin from all the holiday parties I was catering. Each year the list of guests would get bigger and bigger. Finally we had to start to put a governor on the guest list because I no longer was able to feed the party with just left over tenderloin chili and I was having to buy two whole extra tenderloins to grill and make into chili. People used to beg me to sell them that chili. I told them that there was no way they would ever pay what it actually cost to make it.

Pairing down the invite list was quite tricky. Finally we came up with a rule to follow; In order to be invited to our Christmas party someone would have had to invite at least one of us to their house in the previous year. Not all our friends entertained at home, so we had a caveat that if someone had taken us to lunch or dinner that also qualified them for the invite list. It did not seem like unreasonable criteria, but when our usual night for the party came around and some people who had been invited for years were not invited back they were not happy.

How unreasonable. If you consider that they might had been invited for the previous five years and had a dinner that was priceless and had not reciprocated why should they think they should be invited back?

Since those days in the go-go 80’s when I threw multiple big parties all year I had no problem letting people know it was a one time deal if the only time I saw them was at my house. I think that everyone knew I was serious and always wanted to come for the best meal they would eat all month.

I’m a little more lax now. If our guest list were up to Lynn we would have hundreds of people at our annual Christmas lunch, including her baristas at Starbucks and the check out boy at the Harris Teeter. I am not as free as Lynn, nor as rigid as my 80’s self. I just love to have people sit around a table, enjoy some good food and laugh and tell stories. If it always happens at my table that is just fine. I like my cooking and my stories too.

My new measurement to get invited back is not just have I been to your house, or out to dinner with you, but were you helpful when you were at my house? Staying to clean up counts for more than most everything. So to those nice people who cleaned my kitchen today I can pretty much guarantee you are on the list for next year.