Preparing for Guests

We are planning to have several guests during the course of this month so one of the things we do to get ready for this is to shop loss leaders in order to have lots of food on hand without spending a lot of money.  We usually cook everyday when people are here and depending on what activities everyone wants to do, we will even pack them lunches to take with them.  This was our haul for today:

2 small watermelons, 2 ears of corn, 4 tomatoes, 4-12 packs of soda, 3 cans baked beans, 1 mayonnaise, a half pound of London Broil from the deli, 4 boxes of brownie mix, 2 pounds of bacon, 3-half pound packages of cheese, 3 packages of pork ribs, a gallon of almond milk, and a half dozen sandwich rolls.  The total price of these groceries would have been $132.10 but by buying loss leaders, sale items, and using the store's app, we only paid $54.89 for a savings of $77.21!

We have lots of food stored up in the freezer and in the pantry so this will just add to the stockpile and make it super easy to pull together a meal quickly and inexpensively (needless to say, taking a dozen people out to dinner every night would cost a fortune so this is one of the biggest ways we save money when we host visitors!).

Cooking for a Crowd

Cooking for a crowd is kind of our thing.  We had a restaurant and catering business years ago and when I ran a non-profit I used to cook lunch for all of our clients every week so I actually enjoy cooking for groups of people.  This week we are cooking for the SILs and their friends and while everyone is kind of low-maintenance, one of the SILs is not eating bread or rice for Lent.  The no rice thing has been a bit of a challenge since most of our meals are some sort of Asian food but we persevere.  I have several tricks for cooking for a crowd which include:

• Cake mixes are quick to whip up and are very little work to make yet can be an easy way to make dessert for a crowd.
• Cookies are also easy to make.  A couple of tips--if you don't have a lot of time, put the entire bowl of cookie dough into a sheet pan and after is has baked, cut up into cookie sized pieces.  Also, when I make chocolate chip cookies I only use one third of the package of chocolate chips per batch, it doesn't look like the cookies are short on chips and I can make three times the amount of cookies for the price of one bag of chips.
• A simple meal of pasta with sauce, garlic bread, and salad can stretch a few dollars into a pretty big meal for a crowd.
• The same is true of those rotisserie chickens at Costco or the grocery store deli.  From one chicken you can make chicken Caesar salad, white chicken pizza, chicken and dumplings, and many other meals.  Instead of serving fried chicken which serves about four people per chicken, picking the chicken off of the carcass and using it in casserole/salad/pizza recipes can make the one chicken feed a dozen people!  Note that you can then use the chicken carcass to make chicken noodle soup from scratch.
• Making a giant salad is another way to make a few ingredients stretch for a large group.
• Taco bars are also popular at our house.  Simply make/cut up the parts of the taco (meat, beans, lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, etc), heat up some tortillas, and have everyone make their own tacos.
• We cook a lot of Asian food and many of the dishes are an inexpensive way to feed a crowd--fried rice, noodle dishes, spring rolls, and big stir frys are full of inexpensive ingredients that can feed a lot of people for very little money.
• We also cook more than enough food so we have lots of leftovers.  Our guests usually come and go at all hours so this way if they are hungry, they can just look at the leftovers in the fridge and help themselves when they are hungry.
• We keep plenty of whatever fresh fruit is in season on hand so everyone will have easy snacks to grab.
• We hard boil eggs and boil up a bunch of potatoes to have on hand as well (this makes for a quick breakfast, an easy potato salad, or egg salad sandwiches, etc.).
• We also check the loss leaders at the grocery store to see what's on sale then make something using these ingredients.  One rotisserie chicken on sale, a bag of hamburger buns from the clearance rack, a 10 pound bag of potatoes for 99 cents, and a head of cabbage which was also on sale became pulled chicken sandwiches, homemade French fries, and coleslaw for lunch a couple days ago.

The bottom line is to use what's on sale, cook from scratch instead of treating everyone to meals at a restaurant, and pick recipes that make your food--especially meat--stretch (one friend always does seafood boils when she has a lot of guests and it looks like she spends a fortune on crab, clams, oysters, etc.  Yikes!).

10 Things for Guests

We've been busy this week with the SILs (one who is visiting and one who is moving here) and their friends (they know A LOT of people in Vegas and southern California).  Here are 20 things about having guests...

1. We make sure we are stocked up on supplies (lots of toilet paper from Costco, a supply cabinet with soap/spare toothpaste/spare toothbrushes/etc).
2. We also stocked up on food (before they got here we went to the Asian food store and stocked up on Filipino food, got cases of bottled water from Costco, and hit the butcher shop and seafood stores).
3. We cook three times a day for whoever is here and leave plenty of leftovers in the fridge that can easily be heated up.
4. Fortunately one SIL has her car here so they can go around together.  We also have a spare car for guests who don't drive here which makes it easier than schlepping people all over town, this way they can come and go as they please.
5. We have a half dozen spare house keys and give one to each guest so they can come and go even if we aren't home.
6. We kind of have our own set schedule and try to work our schedule around the things that our guests want to do.
7. I email lots of info to each of our guests about things I know they like to do (one SIL loves bingo so I send her links to all of the bingo places around town, another likes touristy stuff so I send her suggestions of things to do).
8. I've got Megabus, FlixBus, and Google flights on my favorites list so I can easily look up/book travel for them (they are going to LA this week and maybe elsewhere next week so it's easy enough to look up and find the best fares this way.  All of us are too old to want to drive six+ hours one way to further flung destinations).
9. We use coupons and know where all the best (cheapest) restaurant specials are for when we take everyone out to the occasional dinner.  This plus using hubby's casino comps makes treating our guests to a dinner out very inexpensive.
10. We will occasionally do touristy things with our guests but more often than not will do things like drop them off on The Strip then pick them up later (saves the expensive parking fee) since the last thing hubby wants to do is walk for miles on this popular tourist attraction in our city.

Overall we love having guests but we like when they "do their own thing" while they are here, using our house as their home base.  This seems to work out well for everyone.

Keeping Our Guests Entertained

We've had friends and family here this past week and will have a short breather before two other families descend next week. (On a side note, I recently asked hubby why we haven't been on a cruise in ages and pointed out that we need to go visit our families this spring and he was kind of non-interested.  He pointed out that we live in a vacation spot so there is more than enough to keep us entertained AND everyone comes here to visit us so we don't need to travel any more.  And I was like :/  ...but I digress...).

The main thing we worry about when we have guests--besides keeping them fed--is keeping them entertained.  Here's what we do:

• We always point them in the direction of the "main attractions" if they haven't been to Las Vegas before (Hoover Dam, Red Rock Canyon, The Strip, Fremont, a buffet, gambling, shopping, a Vegas show, nightclubs, etc).
• We tell them about Tix4Tonight kiosks which sell highly discounted tickets for good shows in Las Vegas.  If they want a less expensive show we get them free show tickets from ShowTickets4Locals.
• We tell them all about the free and cheap entertainment locals love: free bingo, $1 bowling, discount day at the movies, free rodeo shows at SouthPoint, discount shopping at the Goodwill or the swap meet, etc.
• We also check the calendar of local events each week--there can be everything from community fun runs to Scottish Dancers to dog shows to just about everything else eventually....this is a very active place.
• If there is a major event in town we tell them about it as well (or more often, that may be the reason that they came) like NASCAR week, the National Finals Rodeo, World Series of Poker, etc.
• There is also plenty of "normal" activities to do such as water parks, roller skating, pick-up soccer games, etc.
• We also keep a list of kids activities on hand as well.  We have a really popular hands-on kids museum, some wonderful parks--many with water features kids can play in, a candy factory with free tours, a small petting zoo, outside movies, kids activities at the library, etc.
• And a list of adult activities: there are a number of shooting ranges here as well as golf courses, we are within driving distance of "Area 51" and some ghost towns, and there is just about everything else people could want to do from racing exotic cars to driving bulldozers for fun.
• Finally, while hubby always has food made for our guests, we also point them in the direction of good restaurants, generally of the Asian variety (great Filipino food, dim sum, etc).

It's really easy to keep our guests entertained in Las Vegas--often for free or cheap.  In fact, the problem is usually there there are too many things to cram into people's tight schedules when they come to visit!