Practicing Hospitality: Week Two

We are onto week two of Practicing Hospitality! With each post, I hope to encourage you to practice hospitality in your own home in any way that might look. Whether it’s family visiting for a weekend or a weekly Bible study, I want to share tips and tricks to give you the courage to host. In my opinion, the quickest way to make someone feel at home is to feed them. This could be a home cooked meal or simply a tray of pre packaged cookies with a cuppa hot coffee. Food really is the way to anyone’s heart!

For our weekly Bible study, we have opted to feed everyone dinner each time. I love preparing a meal for friends and then fellowshipping together over the meal before study begins. Each year, my husband and I love to go deer hunting together during the fall. And we are always incredibly thankful for the meat harvested during those months! We stock up our freezers and love to use what we have on hand to feed a crowd in a budget friendly way. So that brings me to our second Bible study meal.

Week 2:

Main entree: Spaghetti and Venison Meatballs

Sides: Salad and 2 sourdough loaves

Dessert: Sourdough discard chocolate cake

About a month prior to our Bible study, we had hosted family for Christmas and I had made a huge batch of freezer meatballs using The Pioneer Woman recipe. I only subbed the beef for venison! So when Bible study came around, I only had to pull the meatballs out of the freezer and add them to a crockpot of spaghetti sauce to warm through. And once again, I used this recipe from The Pioneer Woman for the spaghetti sauce. This all went into the crockpot that morning and was warm and ready by dinner!

When planning our meals each week, I try to take inventory of what we already have in our home. I somehow had accumulated five boxes spaghetti noodles in my pantry (when? why?) so those were what originally sparked my idea for spaghetti night! For our sides, I made two loaves of sourdough bread and a friend provided the salad.

And last but not least, was dessert! I recently bought this new cookbook and have loved cooking and baking through it. I have used the master sourdough recipe for my bread for a while and was excited to try something new! Their sourdough discard chocolate cake immediately caught my eye. I tweaked it to make it dairy free for my daughter and gave it a go! All was going well until I didn’t fully read how long to wait until flipping the cake out of the bundt pan. So when I flipped it out the entire cake broke to pieces. *insert face palm*. I tried a piece of said broken cake, and tasted how amazingly scrumptious it was and decided to try again. So I whipped up a second cake, read the instructions and followed them correctly, and flipped out my second cake.. Which too broke in half.

Ok, bundt cakes may not be my thing 😉 But this one was at least more salvageable, so I pieced it back together and smothered it in icing. Everyone ate this delectable, ugly cake without complaint! haha So I’m still calling it a win, and will probably just bake the cake in a regular pan next time. But here is a piece of humility for you, that it’s ok to mess up a meal! Absolutely no one minded the broken, disheveled cake.

Hosting Tip of the Week:

Meal planning is your best friend! I was able to save money this week by just shopping my own pantry first to see what needed to be used. The only things I ended up needing to buy was just a few extra cans of tomatoes for the spaghetti sauce. Listing everything you plan to make also keeps you from forgetting what you need to make and put out. I even like to put out sticky notes earlier in the day on the counter just to remind myself what all needs to be put where. I can’t tell you how many times I have forgotten to put out salad dressing or forks and am left scrambling while people are trying to make their plates. Not a big deal, I know, but lists make the night easier for me to enjoy too!

To end this weeks post, I want to leave you with a quote from Abigail Dodds. I gratefully enjoy her words of encouragement and wisdom on serving others:

“It’s not the house itself that’s the cure. It’s not the precise food or the cozy blankets or the songs or stories themselves, even though those are all necessary forms. It’s the Spirit that dwells there. It’s the Spirit of forgiveness and joy and peace and love and welcome. It’s the Spirit that prepares the good words and the people who are boldly walking in them- making food, cleaning up, rejoicing in song, delighting in fellowship, scheming of ways to bless others… So let your home be a place of righteousness- let it be a cure for all that ails the world- by the power of the Spirit of Christ, it’s possible.”