That was...how many recipes?

While preparing for another one of our Thursdays @ Worth Street dinners, I received an email from my dad. Included in his email was the following formula (please bare in mind he is an accountant):

According to my dad’s calculations, if we decided to do this project of cooking each Thursday for an entire year, the following would need to happen: For one, Felipe would have to come up with 135 new and different recipes (this is taking into consideration three plates per dinner). Secondly, we would have to account for a total of 180 people invited (this is considering we invite at least 4 guests per dinner). 135 new recipes…180 people invited to our apartment! So here is MY very non-accountant account of these two figures: According to my calculations (And please, bare in mind I deal with deciphering human behavior for a living, so numbers isn't really my thing):

So far, I would say we’ve got about 37 people here in NY which we know well enough to invite over for dinner. This means we have to get to know 143 more people by the end of this year! And not just “know”, but know enough to “invite them up” as the singles would say. This is no joke and could even become dangerous at some point! We are putting our lives in the line here!

Ok there is one more thing. Not only do we have to really get to know 143 more people by the end of this year, we need to start getting to know them right about now! If we take the 37 people in NY we know well, and subtract 9 who were already invited to our dinners, this leaves us with 28 people! And if we consider inviting 4 guests per dinner, that also means we only have 7 Thursdays left with people we already know! And 45 other Thursdays to go of breaking bread and sharing dessert with total strangers!

UF! Well, thank god for the out of towners! My parents are visiting from Miami, and of course, they are arriving today, Thursday, just in time for dinner! And then later in July we will have Felipe’s parents. So to all the out of towners out there, this is a cry for help, get your jetblue promotional email blasts going, we need you here! Ok, so here is the quick countdown of things to happen by the end of this project…

37 of our good NY friends are guaranteed to have a happy stomach by the end of this year

7 weeks from now, we have no idea who we could be having dinner with

We have the potential of getting to know and share a meal with 143 people who we have yet to meet

We are bound to try 133 new recipes

Looking forward to dinner number 4!