Cooking for a Crowd with Modern Table Meals

My family is big on family gatherings. With my mom and aunts living within several blocks of one another, getting the entire family together for a meal is a regular occurrence. With the occasional 13 plus person meal, I’ve learned that cooking for a crowd is no easy feat and I’m impressed that my Mom and Aunts both are able to do so without batting an eye.

When I invite the family over to our place it feels like a lot more difficult then any of them make it look so I’m always looking for new ways to make meals that are easy to assemble, delicious to eat, and accommodate any food allergies in the family – Enter Modern Table Meals.

Whenever you gather together a large group of people, its highly likely that someone has a food allergy. In my family, we are lucky that we have not one but several! There are a lot of standby recipes that I can cook that I know everyone can eat, but it’s fun to try something new and introduce the rest of my family to things that I enjoy.

My cousin Kerry is 15 years old and has been juggling diabetes and gluten intolerance for most of her life. Celiac presents itself in a lot of different forms, but for Kerry eating gluten makes it more difficult for her to maintain her blood sugar levels. As a result we try to find large meal solutions that she can eat, and are easy to feed a large crowd, but its difficult to not rely on things that are easy like pasta or other wheat filled dishes.

My other cousin, Julie (who I’ve talked about before), just found that she has an allergy to everything that goes into gluten free food. In addition to being an SJS survivor Julie has a condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which means her body doesn’t produce enough collagen and that she is very susceptible to inflammation. Her allergy to the components often used in gluten free food increases the inflammation, making the other complications of EDS more difficult to endure.

So the logical solution would be that Julie can’t eat what Kerry does, and Kerry can’t eat what Julie does. Easy, except when you regularly make meals for 10 or more people.

When I heard about Modern Table Meals I was super excited to learn that their dishes are something that both my cousins can eat! As a lentil based pasta, many of the ingredients used in typical gluten free products are not necessary and instead of being mostly carbs (bad if you have diabetes), it is a high in protein.

In addition to being something I can serve, Modern Table Meals are incredibly easy to make. When you have a lot of people over, its hard to focus on cooking, but with these dishes as sides (or entrees if I’m just cooking for myself) you can finish a meal in minutes without a ton of additional dishes or preparation.

From package to pot, Modern Table Meals take anywhere from 10 – 20 minutes to prepare and have almost all of the ingredients included right in the package (including veggies and sauce). You just need to add water and olive oil and your meal prep is set.

We grilled up some chicken for this meal and everyone was able to add chicken to their preferred pasta base. So far I’ve tried Mac & Cheese, Pesto, and Italian and I’ve loved all of the outcomes. As a group meal, you definitely need to cook at least 2 packages because each individual package is about 4 servings for adults.

My favorite thing about these meals is how easy to customize each package is. You can toss in your favorite veggies in addition to what comes ready to go in the kit, or just leave them as is for a quick and easy dish. Next time my family comes to visit I’ll be doing a pasta bar, with a few Modern Table options prepared and different add-on’s like steamed broccoli, bacon, grilled chicken and more cheese.

If you’d like to try Modern Table for yourself, I’d love to send a kit out to you to try. Leave a comment (here or on Facebook) with some of your family gathering memories and I’ll select a winner at random who will receive a Modern Table Meal to sample!

This post was brought to you by Modern Table Meals. All opinions, ideas and writing are my own. I was not compensated for this post, but did receive a product sample to inspire this post.