Growing up, did you set the table for dinner at your house? We did at ours.

When the wind begins to bluster, the windowpanes awake silvered with frost, and the blazing gilded light of sundown mellows into the blue-gray of twilight just a tad earlier and earlier little by little until BAM all of a sudden IT'S STONE COLD DARK AT 4:30... This, dear ones, is just the time that we can reliably expect an onset of the crud.

When it comes to entertaining, sometimes you want to pull out all the stops: Creamy nests of homemade pasta. Perfect pours of a special sip, made to order. Tiny soufflés. Any sauce that has an -aise at the end of it. One Foundry Family member likes to make "latkes eggs benedict" brunch for 20, which has the labor-intensive-triple-whammy of making and frying latkes, poaching 40 eggs at once, and whipping up an -aise, holland. WHEW! While we certainly love challenging ourselves to up the ante on our entertaining game (and these end-all-be-all party show-stoppers are, indeed, absolutely wonderful) SOMETIMES you just want to have a few people over and not stress about it, right?