What to Feed unexpected guests?

What to feed unexpected guests?

Do you keep foods to feed unexpected guests?

I think a frozen lasagna would fit the bill.  What else?

In one of my friend circles, we have a term known as "Licky Dabs". I can't really explain where the term came from but it essentially means finger foods and drinks. At times, we will last minute get together and just cobble together whatever we have on hand.

Some sliced cheeses, some fruit and veg, and maybe some kind of dip. It just is something simple to munch on while we gab with each other.

Guests would truly be unexpected.  I have enough food on hand to address the issue. But the last time I had an unexpected guest was over 25 years ago.

Most likely an unexpected guest would be a stray cat. It could eat what the other outside cats eat.

Once we were remodeling and two friends stopped over to help mud the drywall. I had to feed them, so while two continued the work, one gal and I went off to the kitchen to make food. I made egg bake. We had eggs. Hash brown squares and sausage keep well in the freezer, so we had that too. We live in Wisconsin so we ALWAYS have cheese, and cream, and I threw in a can of drained green beans. Baked it while we worked on the house. The only lengthy part was browning the sausage. To sum up, layer frozen brown squares in a cake pan. Brown a pound of ground sausage and spread across hash browns. Whip 12 eggs with a pint of cream, salt and pepper, and pour over sausage.  Cover with green beans and shredded cheddar. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit 75 minutes covered with foil and 15 minutes more uncovered.

Usually we only have one meal a day, breakfast.  So I always have breakfast food, unless I need bacon that is not frozen.

Our daughter came for Labor Day weekend though I was told we were keeping the dogs while they went to check out a campground.

So around noon dear hubby says what did I plan to feed them.  What did I have to feed them?  No meat, no lunch meat, no cheese, etc. Only frozen bread. I have not been buying much that requires cooking because our a/c was out.

I had gone to the grocery store the day before though I did not know the guests were staying.

I find that guests usually enjoy a good nose around the garden, which gives me an excuse to harvest anything that might be good to make a meal out of for them. Right now the prickly pears are ripe, so a quick lesson on how to pick and prepare them would likely go down well. Also the sichuan peppers are ready for harvesting so something that will complement their mouth-numbing spiciness would be good, then have the prickly pears for afters.

Then if they liked them, they would get sent home with a handful of peppers, a baby pepper tree and a pad of each of the four colours of prickly pear.

I could totally get that.

Prickly pear pads with scrambled eggs and tunas for dessert.

How about an egg and bacon pie with some salad?

Homemade shortcrust pastry with flour and butter, beaten eggs, strips of bacon and maybe some sliced tomato.

We had a cheese and caramelised onion quiche and salad for dinner last night.

As for freezer food, we usually have chili con carne, ratatouille, stews, meat pies etc that we can heat up for ourselves when we don’t feel like cooking from scratch.

Dried noodles, both rice and egg noodles are easy to reconstitute and serve with stir fried vegetables for a quick meal.