So how's this for a pizza night?

[Jenise]

I volunteered to make pizzas for a 'do' here in the Village next week. We'll serve approximately 55 attendees, and it's billed as a 'mixer' but expected to be something of a working social event in order to get people enlisted on committees for the coming year. I volunteered because they asked me to consult on dolling up Costco pizzas--and the question was poised as, "...or is Domino's good enough?"

They knew how to get to me.

So of course we're making the pizzas from scratch--though using Trader Joe's dough as I may be stupid but I'm not a glutton for punishment. They gave me a budget of $250.

And I only have two ovens. Their first idea had been to bake off all the pizzas in advance and then reheat so that everyone could eat at once. Lousy logistics given the equipment but furthermore why, I asked, would you want to do that--this club is notorious for having members who show up for free food at 5:00 and are home by 6:00. And the club itself is notorious for buying pre-made food at Costco and crap like Dominos pizza, so the prospect of free food doesn't exactly attract your top talent. "If you really want them to get some work done AND actually have some fun, you keep them around waiting for more food," I said. "The lack of sufficient ovens is a blessing."

So here's what I proposed: we'll start with five vegetarian pizzas and a home-made gardeneria. This would be the salad course. We'll follow 30 minutes later with two 'main course' meat pizzas: a BLT (bacon, roasted garlic, fresh tomatoes, smoked mozz and topped with a garlicky romaine salad when they come out of the oven, and a fennel/spicy chicken sausage. And lastly, a dessert pizza: a three cheese pizza of mozz, asiago and gorgonzola drizzled with balsamic vinegar syrup and topped with fresh rosemary and fig preserves.

Just finished a detailed cost forecast (I am a Cost and Schedule Engineer by profession), and we're right on the money: $248.

Should be fun!

Brava! Brava! Both for the thinking about people and about the food: serving in three courses is brilliant.

Not bad.

And that's a lot of pizza!

[Jenise]

Brava! Brava! Both for the thinking about people and about the food: serving in three courses is brilliant.

Thanks. Once word got out to the committees that Jenise was cooking, signups doubled overnight. But they otherwise kept it a secret because they don't want the nonproductive freeloaders to show up.

[Jenise]

Not bad.

And that's a lot of pizza!

16. I'll have three helpers for prep earlier in the day and cooking/serving in the clubhouse later. Should go well.

How did everything go?

[Jenise]

Howie, thanks for asking. It was almost better than I could have hoped for, since I'm one to beat myself up over any flaws, especially any detail I should have anticipated but somehow didn't. This evening didn't have any hiccups at all. They gave me four kitchen staff, which was so dreamy that rather than serve buffet style which I thought I'd have to do, I could send a pair of servers and a pie out to serve the guests at the tables so they could keep their working momentum going and I could stay with the ovens and not have to deal with the guests. I had no idea I'd have that luxury.

The combinations worked out wonderfully. My favorites, to my own surprise, were the vegetarian and dessert pizzas. For the vegetarian pizza, which was based on nothing I've ever had, just a desire to create something elegant out of what's seasonally available, inexpensive and visually anything BUT the cliché olive-tomato-mushroom-bell pepper vegetarian pizza, I used pesto sauce, fontina cheese, zucchini that we sliced thin on a mandolin and then dessicated with salt for about two hours, more fontina then mushrooms that we sautéed and then squeezed dry, grated lemon peel, parmesan, oregano, black pepper, and lengthwise halves of kalamata olives. Visually beautiful, because the zucchini prepped that way becomes wrinkly like the petals of a carnation instead of just laying there flat, and lots of pops of flavor. Not to flatter myself, but it was the best vegetarian pizza I've ever had.

The two meat pizzas were done exactly as described.

The dessert pizza, however, got some changes. Fig preserves were too expensive so I bought apricot preserves, at about 1/6th the cost on a volume basis, instead. And while we were building the pizzas, it dawned on me that the pine nuts originally destined for the zucchini pizzas would actually add more pizzazz to the dessert pizzas instead. And I was right--they really really worked with the rosemary. No one in that room had ever had a dessert pizza and they LOVED it. And I, who almost never eats desserts, loved it just as much as they did. The final drizzle of the balsamic syrup was exquisite. I only made three, figuring people would be too full to eat much, but they'd have eaten six if I had them. There wasn't a drop left of anything--and I ended up with close to ten people more than I was told to plan for. They made people sign up for this event but word got out that I was cooking so in spite of the fact that the organizers assured me that they never get more than 2 or 3 unplanned guests, more came.

My total grocery bill? $211. $3.57 per guest. Awesome.