Hosting friends at my home is one of my favourite activities. I love planning the menu, cooking with my favourite ingredients, picking out the music, laying out a beautiful tablecloth, and bringing out my collection of vintage tableware. Unfortunately, I don’t do it nearly as often as I’d like because I’m too busy or too tired. After a long week at work, I’d rather spend my precious free evenings in self-care mode, with a hydrating face mask, a bowl of soup, and a TV series I’m binge-watching. While these relaxing evenings do me good, they also leave me wanting more.
When I was a kid, my favourite evenings were with friends or family who would show up unexpectedly and stay for a “laid-back and relaxed” dinner, as my mom would always say. We’d defrost some pasta sauce, pull out the folding chairs, chat, and laugh out loud. The food wouldn’t have won us any culinary contests, but the important thing was spending time together. Now that it’s my turn to be an adult, and in this age of social media and fast-paced lives, I feel like hosting dinner isn’t something we take as lightly as we used to do. The feeling that comes over us to perform discourages us from doing it as often as we did before. And since it’s becoming so much rarer, every occasion is even more pressure-filled. We get stuck in a vicious cycle where we see our friends and family less and less, and that most certainly contributes to a sense of isolation.
“The art of simply inviting someone over for tea or coffee—whether in the morning, afternoon, or early evening—seems to have been lost.”
According to a June 2025 report published by Statistics Canada, based on data collected in 2022 from the Time Use Survey, we see our friends much less often than we once did. In 1986, one in two people saw one or more friends on a given day. By 2022, that figure had dropped to about one in five people. Several factors may explain this trend: work demands, geographical distance, and the ubiquity of social media, which allows us to maintain social connections without meeting in person. Economic factors may also play a role. The term “friendflation” was coined in 2025 in an article by the Financial Times to describe the rising cost of our friendships, which is attributed to the rising cost of living combined with high social expectations. According to a survey commissioned by Grant Thornton in 2025, 40% of Canadians reportedly missed out on opportunities to see their friends due to the cost of living. What if part of the solution were to start hosting casual get-togethers again?
Photo : © Steffen Lemmerzahl
A MUSCLE TO BE TRAINED
Much like a muscle that has been forced into inactivity or simply gotten out of shape over the years, we may need to retrain our skills in hosting and gathering around the table. Start slowly, then gradually increase your effort while respecting your limits (or your budget in terms of time, money, and energy). What might that look like in practical terms?
A CHAT OVER A HOT DRINK
The art of simply inviting someone over for tea or coffee—in the morning, afternoon, or early evening—seems to have been lost, but we’d do well to rediscover it. In addition to coffee or tea, we can keep a variety of plant-based beverages in the cupboard to make comforting lattes. If you want to take it a step further, you can get into the habit of freezing a few individual portions of desserts such as cakes, pies, or muffins when you finish baking them, so they’re ready to be reheated at any time.
A COCKTAIL (WITH OR WITHOUT ALCOHOL!)
Whether it stretches into the evening, gathered around a kitchen island, or a coffee table in the living room, a cocktail remains a special moment to connect, with or without alcohol. When we challenge the belief that alcohol is a must for social gatherings, we may be more inclined to plan cocktail hours more regularly, even on a weeknight. I like to keep a variety of non-alcoholic beers in my pantry, which I serve with a splash of citrus juice, or sparkling water, which I serve with aromatic herbs, a few drops of bitters, syrups, or even savory ingredients such as pickle juice or olive brine.
In terms of snacks, I like to serve up a variety of savory bites: pickled lupin beans served with olives; frozen shelled edamame beans, which are easily reheated in the microwave and seasoned with salt and spices; nuts toasted for a few minutes in a pan or in the oven; or homemade or store-bought hummus served on a beautiful plate with a drizzle of olive oil or chili crisps and chips or crackers.
A WEEKNIGHT DINNER
Dinner doesn’t need to be a three-course meal (and it doesn’t need to contain alcohol, either!). You can choose a simple dish and, if you wish, put a little effort into its presentation.
For a friendly meal, instead of putting out individual plates, I like to put my creations on large serving platters, which I place on the table so that everyone can serve themselves. We can choose to put out our most beautiful tableware, keeping in mind that mismatched plates and bowls also have their charm. And finally, to transform a weeknight meal into a slightly more memorable dish, we can turn to fresh or tangy toppings, such as herbs, marinades, or slices of citrus fruit, or crunchy ones, such as fried onions, toasted nuts, or crumbled chips. With this approach, even leftovers from the previous day can have their place!
Photo : © Karolina Grabowska
MIX BUSINESS WITH PLEASURE
If you want to entertain but you’re short on time, combine it with a task you’d be doing anyway, like meal prep: assembling gyoza to be frozen, baking muffins and snacks, cooking a large lasagna to be portioned out for lunches, or even washing and prepping vegetables for the week.
You can do this on a Sunday, where you spend part of the afternoon cooking before sharing a meal together, or on a weeknight with a happy hour vibe that doesn’t go too late. As a bonus, every time you eat that dish throughout the week, you’ll be thinking about the people you cooked it with.
In the culture we live in, it can be difficult to set a goal such as “have people over more often” without slipping into a performance mindset and trying to outdo yourself each time. To avoid falling into this trap, I think it’s important to talk about it, to name it. To challenge ourselves, we can maybe even take turns hosting with our close friends and family, without doing a major cleanup beforehand or a complicated menu. That way, everyone can play around with the concept, laugh at their mistakes, and truly rediscover the joys of laid-back, relaxed gatherings.
Sources
Grant Thornton Debt Solutions. (n.d.). The rising cost of friendship in Canada. https://gtdebtsolutions.com/en/debt-help-resources/articles/article-the-rising-cost-of-friendship-in-canada
Statistics Canada. (2025, June 17). La contrainte de temps et le temps passé avec des amis au cours des 30 dernières années. Le Quotidien. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/250617/dq250617d-fra.htm