Shmini Atzeret dinner

[magid]

As of Tuesday, I had one definite guest, a bunch of not-availables, and a whole lot of no-replies, so I started casting a wider net. By Wednesday (erev chag), I had four guests, and I started panicking that I wouldn't have enough food. OK, not panicking completely, but I was concerned, and general undersleptness probably contributed to the situation.

The menu ended up being:

• wine/grape juice
  
• challah (made weeks ago, kept in the freezer, which was good, because I had no time to fit baking a batch of bread into my time before yom tov)
  (kiddush and motzi ended up being in the sukkah, with the rest of the meal inside)
  
• Trader Joe's brown rice medley
  
• baked acorn squash mixed with chickpeas and hot sauce
  
• cooked cranberry-orange-apple-plum-raisin sauce (minimal sugar, possibly too little for most people's palates)
  
• roasted carrot sticks that I stacked up like a row of cord wood, then drizzled the lemon-honey-tahini sauce over the top (no clue why I got fancy with plating that one dish, but I just needed to do it that way)
  
• roasted Brussels sprouts (mostly made so I could bring more than half of them to the lunch I was invited to, along with the host's favorite, watermelon pickles)
  
• eggplant roasted with onion and tomato
  
• raw-pack (julienned) pickled beets
  
• sauteed onions, woodear mushrooms, and yutoy/yuchoy with spicy tofu nuggets, fresh Asian noodles (wheat-based), plus miso and soy sauce
  
• sliced Persian cucumbers (served partly to have a bright green, partly to have a crunch, and partly to pair with the spreads)
  
• cream cheese
  
• taramasalata (this and the cream cheese bought for the breakfast I brought to Hillel for my birthday, which was not at all close to being used up)
  
• Trader Joe's pumpkin cheesecake (which meant the cinnamon-apple-walnut bread pudding with maple syrup I'd made didn't get served) (bought without prior intent, after asking questions about how two types of cheesecake that weighed the same could have one with a lower price, but higher price per pound, and figuring I kinda had to buy one after all the trouble the second employee went to to fix the problem (the first employee starting to say something vague about holiday pricing; I cut her off saying it was *math*, not holiday stuff, and turned to the other guy who'd shown up))

I, um, had lots of leftovers.