KISS (Keep it simple stupid) Rule #1 for preparing large family dinners.

Right now, I am preparing for a "family dinner".  My stepson is coming with his wife and three children.  My stepdaughter is coming with her boyfriend, and our three daughters are coming with boyfriends.  The immediate family is up to 15 and counting (I'm still hoping for more grandchildren!)  We decided to make lasagna, but for 15, we needed at least two batches.  Here is the life lesson I am learning from this:  don't make your own meat sauce unless it is a proven recipe that you have used several times before.  Ragu or Prego has the sauce "perfected"!  We are trying a new "white lasagna" recipe that we had the day we moved in (someone else made it for us.)  Making two of the traditional recipe would have been SO MUCH EASIER and so much cheaper than making two different and new recipes at once.  My husband went to the grocery store to get the "ingredients" for our simple lasagna, and has spent more than $200 so far for this dinner.  It would be one thing if we were having beef tenderloin, but ingredients for lasagna??  (And no, that doesn't include any alcohol...although I might need some before this dinner is over).  We just had our kitchen professionally cleaned yesterday, and today, it looks like a bomb went off.   Right now, my husband is doing most of the work because he said, "this is fun".  So now I am happily typing my blog to let my daughter's know that if their husband is going to leave them with the cooking or the mess, KISS and make it "semi-homemade".