It's Beginning to Smell like Swiss Colony

Some of you may know of my love of the Swiss Colony company.   For those of you unfamiliar with Swiss Colony they are basically a food mail order company. They sell meats and cheeses, a large assortment of chocolates, nuts, hams, and few kinds of cakes. Everything I have ever ordered from there has been really good and I’m wondering if I should take advantage of their services this year for the big day.  

The main course of Thanksgiving 2 is basically taken care of. I am making the turkey leftovers, and my friend will be doing the turkey frying, so I have no reason to get one of their honeyed hams. The parts of the meal where I could use help are the beginning and the end. Before the meal I was debating on whether or not to get a nice collection of meats and/or cheeses. They also have some nice dip choices, but those are easy enough to make on my own. The Swiss Colony cheeses and meats require minimal prep work (just slicing really) and they do taste really good. The debate I suppose is whether or not the time I would put into the appetizers that I would replace is offset by the amount of money it would take to replace the quantity of homemade food.

The end of the meal is a whole different story. Desserts, especially some of the choices they offer, are significantly complicated to make. So, I have to weigh cost, recipe difficulty and flavor. Flavor is easy. Evreything I make will taste good and everything I order would be something I have ordered before. Difficulty almost always equals more cost to me. A rare ingredient (which means they don’t have them at Wegmans) also means increased travel time. For example, the Swiss Colony baklava is a bit more expensive than what I could purchase at a bakery, but it arrives at my house and is incredibly tasty. Flavor and convenience are hard to argue with.  Swiss Colony eliminates the difficulty factor, but trades it for cost.  I would like suggestions as I’m not sure which direction to go with this. I can only come up with one plan. I’ll pick up a few desserts and a small assortment of meat sticks because It won’t be as Christmasy feeling if there are no Swiss Colony Beef Logs.