I’ve been thinking a lot recently about party Food, even more than usual, because I’m working on a cookbook about such stuff (working title: Tiny Bites). Lately I’ve been testing my take on Swiss buttercream frosting. (Yesterday’s version was root beer. The batch is now in the freezer awaiting its use as a topping for root-beer brownies at the wedding reception I’m helping with in August. It was pretty good, but I’m still tweaking the basic recipe.)

So, as I’ve often said, food can be a tool that promotes conviviality. People aren’t eating because they’re hungry but because they’re at a party or other event, and the food creates an excuse to stand around and talk. That’s fine as long as people don’t overdo it. I was reminded of the Wednesday night prayer meetings/Bible studies we used to have at a small church we attended for about seven years in the nineties. The pastor’s wife would always make a cake and serve it after the service, and some of my nicest memories of that church are centered around those cake-eating get-togethers. The cake was just from a mix, with frosting probably from a can. The pastor’s wife wasn’t especially interested in homemade baking; she was interested in having people stay around. And because she was such a warm, outgoing person herself we all loved hanging out with her. The cake wasn’t the point; it was the pretext for the gathering.

Then came the sad day when the pastor and his wife left to lead another church. We all felt a little desolate, and I decided I’d try to keep the cake-after-Wednesday-night tradition going. But I didn’t want to make a box cake with canned frosting, so I kind of drove myself crazy every Wednesday making a from-scratch cake, doing way more work than I needed to do. And guess what? I don’t remember that those after-church gatherings, around my homemade cake, were all that much fun. The light and spirit had gone out of them, even if the time and effort put into the actual food was higher. I just wasn’t the same level of hostess; and because we were such a small group the loss of that one key person plus her husband and kids was enough to change the whole dynamic. We ended up leaving later on that year to attend another church.

But I got to wondering: what could I have done if I’d wanted to keep the conviviality but scale back on the food? We didn’t really need to stand around eating cake at 9:00 PM every Wednesday night. I had planned to write a post on this burning issue sometime this week, and today the Gretchen Rubin/Liz Craft podcast addressed a very similar one: the idea of the “evil donut bringer,” that is, the person who brings in treats to the office and leaves them in the break room where they sit tempting everyone to indulge. (”Evil” is their term, not mine. I’ve written about this concept before.) They said that a study in the UK showed that, while on the one hand people in an office acknowledged that they found it hard to resist a treat that had been brought in by a co-worker (usually a store-bought cake) and then felt guilty about indulging, on the other hand they said that the cake helped create a happier atmosphere in the office.

So what to do? Ideas that have been floated include bringing in fresh flowers, a puzzle that people can help put together as they drop in and out, or even Legos. A tray of cut-up veggies is just not going to create any kind of celebratory atmosphere. In my case, however, I needed to serve food. Gretchen tells a story about her elder daughter’s advisor at college who brought in “miracle berries,” a tablet made from some African fruit that makes everything you eat afterward for several hours taste sweet. (Some substance in the berries blocks the taste bud receptors that convey bitter and sour flavors.) He had everyone suck on a tablet (they’re quite expensive) and then gather around a table with all kinds of normally-not-sweet items: lemons, pickles, cheese, etc. It was a great way for everyone to participate and interact.

But of course I wouldn’t have done that every week even if those berries had been available back then. They’re more of a one-time experience. What could I have done? If I could go back and give my old self the advice I push now, I’d have said to consider a couple of items: some small, not-too-sweet and easy-to-make cookies, maybe some fruit (as in the illustration), and some kind of low-sugar but festive drink, maybe even just seltzer water with a lime slice. People like almost anything fizzy. They could have drunk something, had a couple of cookies and stood around talking for just as long as they did with the cake, and with far fewer calories and sugar, and without any weird chemicals from the cake mix—as long as I created that kind of atmosphere. The key was for me to show that I was really interested in having people stay. As it was, I think I came across as taking pride in my cake but not all that involved with the people eating it.

What about you? Is there some food-centered event that doesn’t really depend on the food? How can you scale back on the indulgence but up the festivity?

Use Food to Promote Conviviality without Promoting Indulgence