cooking for two

how in the world does one cook for only two people?
when i was catering, i would always prepare a bit more and bring dinner home for bob and me.
now, since i am no longer catering, i have to have meals that will be interesting, fun and tasty for just the two of us without a load of leftovers!.....this will be my new mission now----learning how to cut down on amounts of foods!....for two, not fifty!.....
it's funny how things come full cycle.....back in the 70's when we were all starting out with small children and no money, we would entertain our friends in our homes over dinners we prepared....there weren't all the many restaurants like we have now back then and, of course, none of us had any money to spare!....we used to pick interesting recipes, set our tables with the good china, get some fresh flowers and our friends would be so delighted and we'd have wonderful evenings!.....in fact, that's how my catering business began!...my friends would love my twist on foods and would say that i should provide foods for people who didn't cook....they even suggested a name---trish's dishes!.....this was back when there were very few caterers---it
wasn't the huge industry then that it is now.....
i was always big on presentation.....the lovely table settings, flowers, etc......my feeling was that if the meal looked really pretty, it didn't always matter what the menu was!.....
i started out with a stand at the local farmers' market selling prepared foods.....however, i was just a bit ahead of my time----the blackboard would have "shrimp quiche today" and people would say, "what is shrimp qwish?".....or i would have strawberry with port soup when we could get local berries from york county and
people would question serving cold soup!......
that was a wonderful learning experience for me and i did that for a little more than a year and then found a little building where i could install a kitchen and started the catering business.....i was so scared and really didn't know how to operate and promote a business!.....i could probably teach a course on what NOT to do!....
i labored over a name for my business......and finally came up with creative catering----oh, i thought i was so clever!......little did i know til i got a computer years later and went to get a domain name for the website that everybody and their brother all over the country had the same name!.....
when i opened my little shop (i was planning to do take-out also at that time) and had a grand opening party,
my aunt gave me a beautiful book, entertaining by martha stewart.....i felt i had found my soul mate!...she had been doing what i was now doing and her style was right up my alley the way i was doing things!....of course, she was so far ahead of me.....i adapted her recipes and absolutely copied many of her presentations---it would be interesting to find out how many caterers were influenced by martha!....
now with the economy being so hard on all of us in some way or another, we are going to get back to the basics and start entertaining at home again....it makes no sense to go to a restaurant, spend a lot of money and not
be pleased with the food or service or both----who needs that aggravation?.....now that i am not working 24/7 it will be fun to gather our friends and do like we did so many years ago!....
however, that still doesn't solve my immediate problem of what to serve for dinner tonight for just the two of us!.....