On Portion Size

I had a comment from a reader... I don't want to say who it is, so I'll make up a name. Let's call him "Joah Oualker." He suggested that I was being overly generous by claiming that the eggplant Parmesan dish would serve four people.

Victoria and I had the dish, exactly as I made it, for dinner on Wednesday. It was a meal for the two of us, with one small portion left over. We didnt have any side dishes, and both of us were pretty hungry. My assumption was that, given a salad and a side, or two side dishes, or anything else that you might serve with it, it would be an adequate main course for four adults. Delicious garlic bread, for example, is one thing that you might serve with it, or perhaps marscapone. Then again, perhaps not.

I don't know what marscapone is. Is it an Italian deli meat?

These are, however, only assumptions. There are plenty of situations in which you might want to use your own judgement. My suggestions as to how many people each dish can feed might be wrong in some or all of the following circumstances. Feel free to increase the size of the dish if:

• You are a giant, titan, cyclops, or other creature of significantly larger than average size.
• You have eaten an entire goat, cow, emu, or swordfish in a single sitting; alternately, if you know off the top of your head how long it would take you to skeletonize such an animal.
• Your guests are circus animals, such as elephants, giraffes, or dinosaurs.
• You have the ability to detach your jaw to consume things larger than your head.
• You are possessed by a demon, ridden by a loa, or are the avatar of a god whose main feature is vicious, unending hunger.
• You were cursed by a gypsy witch to eat constantly and never be sated - yet grow ever thinner, thinner... thinner.
• Your mouth is a portal to some alternate plane, and only one hundredth of the food which passes through your lips makes it to your stomach.
• You are a superhero with a hyper-accelerated metabolism, or who in some other way needs vast quantities of food to fuel super-powers.
• You measure the food you eat in gross tonnage.
• You once went to a restaurant, and ate all the food in the restaurant, and they had to close the restaurant.

There might be other circumstances that I'm missing - but I think my point is there. I will do my best to give an idea of how much food each dish makes. However, I fully expect my readers to be aware of their own peculiarities, and to adjust the portion size to suit themselves. If you feel that my recommendations are not a value-add for you, feel free to ignore them entirely!

In the meantime, I hope that, for most readers, my estimates prove helpful.


NOTE - Also, maybe instead you're miniature, or something? Like a perfect, tiny doll? And eat less food? So you want to, maybe, adjust the dish size down?