Description
Cooking for twelve is not cooking for four with the numbers multiplied. Somewhere between the two, the recipe stops being the hard part and the kitchen starts being the hard part — and no recipe you own will mention it, because every recipe is written as though it were the only thing you were cooking that day.
This is the whole system in one file. You describe the evening at the top — who is coming, what kind of dinner, what time it lands on the table — and five panels read from it.
What it works out
- What to buy. Two numbers on every line: what reaches the table, and what to buy. Those are not the same number, and the gap between them is yield. It is the reason hosts run out of the main course.
- The bar. Bottles, glassware, garnish, zero-proof, and a batching calculator that adds the dilution water a batch actually needs — the difference between a good batched cocktail and a strong bad one.
- Cold space. Refrigerator capacity measured the way it actually runs out: square inches of shelf under a usable height, because covered party food does not stack. Plus the ice arithmetic, which is mostly not about ice in glasses.
- Traffic control. Every dish placed backwards from the serve time, least forgiving first. It finds the temperature conflicts, the missing rack and the burner collision at 6:45, and says plainly which dish has to move to Wednesday.
- The runbook. All of it merged into one timeline, every line carrying the reason it sits where it does — which is the only thing that lets you cut it when you are behind.
The Field Manual is included
Twenty-one printed pages of the same numbers, generated from the same code, for when your hands are wet and the laptop is in the other room.
What’s free
Every panel in here — quantities, bar, cold space, traffic control — also runs free on its own as one of the site’s calculators. Buy this when you don’t want to run four of them separately and copy the answers into a notebook by hand; that’s the whole and only difference.
How it works
One HTML file. Double-click and it opens in your browser. Nothing installs, nothing phones home, nothing you type leaves your computer, and it works with no internet at all — this year and in ten years. If you paid for it, it should not be possible to take it away.
Who this is not for
If you want recipes, this is the wrong product; it is the arithmetic around them. And it is catering planning, not a food-safety authority — the one hard limit it enforces is the two-hour window for perishable food out of the cold, and it states that plainly rather than burying it. Cook to temperature, not to a schedule.
