How Not to Cater for a Party

Well it finally happened. Last Friday I graduated after 6 years. On Saturday I had a party for 70 of my friends and family who I had made suffer throughout my study. I was highly organised. I had all my colour-coordinated plates in pink and yellow tones that I had collected over the past few years, all lined up and ready:

Then everything went wrong. There was ham and mango salsa that didn't even make it to the table . . .

Nor did the camembert and quince paste on wheatmeal biscuits that I forgot about till everyone had gone home . . .

This is only a quarter of the 8 kilograms of prawns. There were 16 dozen oysters of which barely anything was eaten . . .

There were five of these quiches (thanks, Bob, for trying to style it for me, but the bin and tea towel got into the photo somehow), and six fritattas, which hardly anyone touched . . .

Then there were three of these gigantic pizzas, of which two remained untouched:

That's because I also ordered 100 each of satay chicken sticks, spring rolls, curry puffs and fish cakes, which were quite a hit (Sorry I don't have any pictures of them). Not to mention a gigantic flourless chocolate cake, a citron tart, a triple chocolate cake and a whole lot of Madeleines:

Luckily I have many family members and friends to help eat the leftovers. The moral of this story is: Decide what you want and divide it by four and you'll probably be OK. Then you won't be left with 4 dozen oysters and 4 kilos of prawns hiding at the bottom of your fridge after everyone's gone home.