Much of my free (ha!) time this week is being spent preparing for a dinner party scheduled for this Saturday. I'm making dinner for eight adults and seven children to settle up on a bet that I lost - a bet I had no business making but one in which winning or losing wasn't so much a big deal because it was merely a matter of making dinner for friends or eating dinner cooked by someone else with friends. "Losing" isn't so much a concern with stuff like that, is it?

I didn't trouble too much with the menu. Although this crowd doesn't make many demands in the way of dietary restrictions, religious, moral, health or otherwise, they have definite opinions about food. Some are more adventurous than others, some can't fathom a meal without meat, others don't want anything that might be defined as "fancy" and still others find that a week without a five-star meal is like a week without sunshine. So you can see where the planning might have become complicated.

I fiddled around for a while with ideas about flank steaks and risotto but cast that idea aside as being too fussy, too much last minute activity (all that stirring) that would prevent me from enjoying my friends. Next I considered pot roast, but there's not much celebratory about pot roast - as delicious as it most definitely is. Roasted chickens, while I adore them, seemed pedestrian and nothing about lasagna excited me, either.

I picked up, and set back down, cookbook after cookbook. Mediterranean? No. Indian? No. Tapas? No. Nothing hit quite the right note but, just as I was beginning to despair of settling on a really nice meal for my friends, one that didn't try too hard nor was slapdash, I lit upon The Williamsburg Cookbook, a book I had forgotten I owned. Perfect! And as soon as I read the short essay about country ham, I knew I had my answer.

Ham is one of the traditional meats of the Easter season. It is at once celebratory, hearty, elegant and simple, and a wonderful cornerstone to a spring feast. Once I settled on ham, the rest of the menu fell into place very quickly. So far (i.e., subject to change, depending upon my time and mood) come this Saturday night we will be eating:

Nibbles: spicy roasted nuts, olive balls, vodka marinated tomatoes

Firsts: Spinach tart

Soup: Roasted Strawberry Buttermilk, with shortbread crouton

Salad: Composed Salad of greens, red onion, capers, Mandarin oranges, tarragon vinaigrette

Sorbet: Rosemary butternut squash

Mains: Ham, scalloped potatoes, garlic kale

Dessert: Flourless chocolate cake with raspberry coulis* and crystalized ginger

Wines and drinkables will be provided by another bet-losing friend, and will likely consist of Prosecco and Gewurztraminer. I like the idea of a little liquor afterwards, but who knows? Coffee, certainly.

* Otherwise known in this house as "jam that didn't set up."