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Preparing a Dinner
Consider the process of preparing a dinner. If the meal is only for yourself, then
you might decide on a relatively simple menu: salad, stirfry, lemonade, and
cookies for dessert. Preparation of the salad might involve cutting up some let
tuce, tomatoes, cucumber, and carrots, and then adding a small amount of
dressing. Preparation could be done in one bowl—perhaps using a cutting board
and knife in the process. Similarly, preparation of the stirfry might involve cut
ting vegetables (and perhaps meat or another protein source) and adding spices
during cooking. Because the stirfry would take a little time to cook, you might
start it first, because you would have time to cut the salad ingredients while
cooking took place. Lemons might be squeezed into a glass, sugar and water
added, and stirring done quickly with a spoon. Although this preparation of din
ner involves several steps, each is fairly straightforward. Further, each step takes
a short amount of time, so coordination of the various steps is relatively easy.
In the case of the salad, preparation could use the bowl for serving, making
cleanup relatively short as well.
Next, consider preparing the same menu for yourself and three guests.
Preparation of the stirfry might be about the same, although you would have to
initially chop up about four times the amount of ingredients than before.
Cooking might take somewhat longer, requiring you to stir frequently to main
tain even cooking. Although this might require your full attention, you could still
use a single frying pan or wok. If you wanted to be fancy, you might place the
finished stirfry into a serving bowl, and the guests could serve themselves from
the bowl at the dinner table. With the need to supervise the cooking of the stir
fry, you probably would have to prepare the salad beforehand. As with the stir
fry, a serving bowl might be needed (although you might just prepare four sepa
rate salads). Turning to the lemonade, uniformity would require that you prepare
the beverage in a pitcher. Again, this would need to be done beforehand.
Although I could add detail, even this outline of the dinner preparation for four
people indicates that the process for four people is somewhat more complex
than the preparation for one person. Serving bowls and pitchers are needed.
Coordination is more difficult, because cooking requires mixing and the cooking
time for four people is not adequate for the preparation of the salad or lemon
ade. On the other hand, the basic tasks are similar—and you still could take the
cookies directly from the package.
As a third scenario, consider preparing the same menu for 200 guests. With
this number, nothing may seem straightforward. First, you probably no longer
have room to seat the guests in your apartment or home, so you would have
to rent a hall. Then you would need to arrange for tables, chairs, and so on.
(These might be arranged as part of the hall rental, but you still would have
to work with the folks at the hall to set up tables, and the like.) Fixing just
the salads might take one person several hours, and you might hire a person
to do only this task. After the salad was prepared (perhaps using multiple
serving bowls), space constraints might require that salads be served
to guests as the food was put on the salad plates. Preparation of the stirfry
