Easter Catering For A Full House

It is four days, not a lunch

Christmas gets planned to the hour. Easter gets planned as far as Sunday lunch and no further, which is why the problem is never Sunday. It is Saturday, when everyone has arrived and nobody has decided anything, and it is Monday, when the fridge is a graveyard of leftovers and there are still eleven people in the house.

If you have family staying, the catering question is not “what do we do for Easter Sunday”. It is “who is cooking on the other three days”.

Where a buffet actually helps

Saturday, when people arrive. Everyone lands at different times off different motorways. A cold buffet sits happily for an afternoon and lets people eat when they get there rather than at a time that suits nobody.

• Buffet 1 at £5.50 a head, sandwiches, eight fillings, mixed selection.
• Buffet 5 at £7.70 with savouries: sausage rolls, pork pies, quiche, samosas.

Sunday. Most people want to cook this one and should. If you would rather not, Buffet 9 at £11.00 is the full spread: sandwiches, savouries, crisps, fresh fruit, homemade cakes and juice.

Monday. The forgotten day, and the one where a delivered buffet earns its place most obviously, because by then nobody wants to look at the oven.

Feeding a mixed house

Easter gatherings skew to the extremes of the age range: small children and grandparents, often at the same table.

Order the children separately. The kids party buffet is £8.00 a head, it is different food rather than smaller portions, and two orders usually costs less than one buffet large enough for both. It also means the adults’ sandwiches survive past the first ten minutes.

Every buffet is 30% vegetarian as standard, with vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free and halal portions prepared separately and labelled.

Add-ons worth having

• Fresh fruit platter, £13.80. The thing everyone reaches for by day three.
• Homemade cakes, £2.25 a head.
• Cheese selection or ploughman’s platter, £16.50: good for an evening that nobody wants to cook for.
• Cans of pop £1.35, fruit juice £2.75 a litre for a house that has run out of everything by Saturday night.

The bank holiday problem

This is the part to get right. Good Friday and Easter Monday are bank holidays, and our ordinary lead time of 4pm the day before does not simply carry across them. The kitchen prepares on the morning of delivery, so a bank holiday changes which days can be prepared and which cannot.

Ring us with your dates in early March rather than working it out in Holy Week. We will tell you exactly which of the four days we can deliver on and which we cannot, and you can plan the cooking rota around the answer.

Delivery is free and there is a £20 minimum on the order value.

For a bigger gathering

If Easter at yours means thirty or forty people rather than eleven, a hog roast from £7.25 a head works well over the long weekend, with a 50-guest minimum, about 3m by 5m of flat ground and a 25% deposit to secure the date. April in the East Midlands, though: have somewhere for people to stand that is not the garden.