The Boy Scouts' Guide to Holiday Entertaining.

Katouni Street,
Anoladadika ("the upper oil warehouse district"),
in beautiful Thessaloniki.

How the Boy Scouts managed to corner the motto "be prepared" is anyone's guess. I had a friend who was from the UK and she once used the expression "a dirty stop out." This apparently is a person, not an activity, and, although once you clear that up it seems pretty obvious, she illustrated it with the example of a woman who never went out for the evening without bringing change of fresh panties and a toothbrush. Well- although perhaps not exactly what the Boy Scouts had in mind- this is nothing if not preparedness.

Why stop there? It's a good motto for the kitchen too, especially during the holidays. It is natural to interpret this as having everything on hand you might need- extra butter (every time I open the freezer those 20 packs of butter fill me with calm), chocolate, flour. Cheeses, wines for drop in guests and for taking to parties. Food stuffs. But actually, the thing that throws everything else into upheaval when it is missing is not food, but all the infrastructure items- pans, dishes, and most of all packaging materials. How many times have you made a beautiful and laborious dessert and sent your guests off with a piece for breakfast in an unceremonious mangle of foil? Better the glorious memory to linger than the misshapen lump. Or you have treats in abundance on your counter- having tried every tempting thing from the New York Times and holiday issues of Saveur and Bon Appetit- but still end up in your party dress on your knees in front of the deep corner cupboard, ransacking it for an old cake box you think you might have folded up after wiping the frosting from the inside of the lid. 

Since I do some catering, I have fresh cake boxes in several sizes in my cupboard, and their impact on day-to-day domestic life has been dramatic. Seriously, you can almost put cat food in a cake box. The high expectations the box invites make whatever is inside feel like a present, a treat, something special. Cookies stay whole and fresh. Nothing looks suspicious to the squeamish (I am squeamish. I do not like to take a fingerful of crumbled cake from a wad of tinfoil. I always imagine the worst- grubby food handling. Cats. Enthusiastic children). Tidy boxes? People receive them with happiness and eat from them in confidence. 

And when you are in post cognac happy drowsy hostess mode, that stack of small boxes you put out on the counter before your dinner party guests arrived hours ago, makes the end of the night easy and graceful. Instead of a mess of foil and used grocery bags and light panic, you send your guests off with a sweet farewell, in a perfect little box in its perfect little bag

I would not go into the Christmas and New Year's weeks without 2 sizes of boxes, and handsome cellophane bags in a couple of sizes- these make everything shimmer and glitter- and plain clear plastic bags or paper bags with handles to put them in. Also, a couple types of ribbon. As I was preparing a special package this week, I went not once but actually three times to our Agro-Industrial neighborhood- a cobblestone maze of warehouses specializing in supplies for small scale agricultural production- wine jugs, oil cans and barrels, feta cheese tins, curing tubs, mammoth canning jars, twine, etc. 

This neighborhood also has wholesalers of conventional commercial packaging materials- coffee cups, bread bags, deli paper, and so on. 

Warehouse shelves are laden with unexpected
glimpses of nostalgia.

For me, packaging should be either beautiful and useful, or beautiful and not wasteful. This precious craft-store packing makes an impression, but I hate to throw it out when I get it, and I hate to keep it around, looking all pricey and precious and not very useful. Packaging from sources who have the same mindset- industrial wholesalers- is functional, and practical, and definitely not twee. 

In a new context, the ubiquitous takes on fresh interest.

So were my three outings in a time-crunched week well spent? Oh, my yes. First, there is the  beauty of useful things. Also. I have, for a price not really even worth mentioning, an abundance of purpose specific packing and wrapping stuffs- various bags both chic (cellophane) and industrial (coffee bags with graphics from the sixties), various paper food wrappings, glass jars, metal tins, white paper boxes, and pretty bits of string and ribbon and twine. Putting together the packages is a delight. 

Infrastructure firmly in place, I can focus on what I really enjoy this time of year- baking, and sharing everything that comes out of the oven. Happy holidays!

Scoops and strainers, shining like silver.