Hospitality on a Budget

Today I will go through all the receipts and bank statements to give the official savings tally, but really, I don't even have to look - it has to have been the LOWEST spending December of my whole married life.   Absolutely mind boggling when I think about how much I used to spend, but not just in dollars.  Think about it.  What about the time I used to spend shopping, driving, looking for parking spaces, wrapping, stressing, thinking about the many gifts I needed to buy, the sleeplessness it caused sometimes....I could go on and on. This definitely has to go down in the records as one of the most memorable Christmas seasons.  We also spent more time with friends and family than we ever have before.  We were able to show hospitality way more than ever as Renaissance Man was not feeling as much pressure before.  The kids were thrilled as they love having people over.

I wanted to get some thoughts down on hospitality, by the way.  Last minute we had friends over the other day.  It was impulsive.  I had done no grocery shopping as it was not in the budget to buy all sorts of little appetizers (which I would have done in the past), plan a big fancy meal, get a yummy dessert.  We were supposedly staying home, laying low and in my head hospitality is expensive, isn't it?  But here we had a wonderful day of clear weather, yes, it was cold, but our rink was in prime shape, so suddenly we thought why not call someone up, or should I say 18 people to be exact.  But there was nothing in my fridge except leftovers, what was I thinking?! Sometimes I laugh at myself as I know it makes no sense, yet I still grab the phone, I still make the invite and then I wonder to myself how I'll be able to pull it off.

Within 2 hours there were 28 people in the house and it was just a matter of time before everyone wanted something to eat.  Here's what I did.....

I quickly threw all the turkey bones and meat into a giant pot and started some soup stock.  Then I grabbed the leftover spaghetti sauce (which seemed like very little to me) and warmed it up.  I even had left over noodles and had stored them in ziplock bags with olive oil, so they were still in great shape.  I had one bag of nachos and a whole bunch of salsa, so threw that in the oven with cheese.  Then I quickly defrosted some ground pork and next thing you know I had a whole casserole dish of meatballs.  I then went back to the turkey stock and deboned the turkey, threw some onions and carrots in the pot and added some frozen peas and carrots as well as more leftover noodles and voila  - turkey soup!  We didn't even have to call everyone for dinner, they must have smelled food as suddenly the kitchen was full of people waiting for dinner - and so I told them it was like a Chinese buffet - something for everyone - nachos, soup, meatballs, noodles, spaghetti sauce, carrots and dip - you name it, we had it!  It fed everyone and, of course, not unlike the feeding of the 5000, there were leftovers! I have tons of soup for today and even spaghetti sauce.  I hadn't spent a dollar (well, I suppose I had by buying the groceries earlier, but you know what I mean).  Normally if I'm having people over, it's not that I want to impress them, per se, but I like putting on a nicer spread - I would never serve my guests leftovers - that would be unheard of!  But there I was, serving them all leftovers and it was good!  Delicious even! Everyone seemed happy, full of food, and good fellowship happened, as it was always does, when it is around a table.

So I guess the lesson to be learned is we are still trying to be hospitable even though we have cut back on spending.  Hospitality is a command.  I figure if he wants me to be hospitable than he'll provide the means to do so.  That is exactly what is happening and remember, most of our friends have lots of kids, so it's rarely just having one or two over - it's usually another 10-20!  No joke!

Well, there you have it - Happy New Year and may we all enjoy one another's friendship and fellowship over many more meals of leftovers in the year to come!