Toby Stolar once catered for Sinatra and Sting and now feeds 1,500 clients at a dozen Broward social service agencies. So doing Rosh Hashana dinner at home for 22 is no sweat.

Her menu never varies. ``Chopped liver, carrots and celery and olives, challah, chicken soup, matzoh balls, the apples and honey, brisket for sure, the mashed potatoes, the tsimmes, meatballs and cabbage, turkey, dilled cucumbers, ratatouille, carrot and apple molded pudding, strawberry shortcake, cold lemon soufflé, angel food ice box cake. We always have some kind of chocolate; the kids always have ice cream if they want.''

Stolar sighs. ``I must be nuts.''

Nuts? Hardly. Energetic? You try doing this at 80.

Stolar shrugs. With 35 years' experience, ''It just comes easy to me,'' says South Florida's original catering queen.

For those not similarly blessed, Stolar offers this advice: ``Prepare in advance. To me, that's No. 1. Shop, make lists, cross things off as you finish them, cook whatever you can before.''

Much of her menu is do-ahead, including her brisket, which Stolar makes two days in advance, and her pudding and dilled cucumbers, prepared the day before.

''I get started and I'm like a machine. I can't stop,'' she says.

It has ever been thus.

''Rosh Hashana hasn't changed in all these years,'' says her son, Jeff Koplow. ``We all go to my mom's and she does all the cooking.''

''I want to please everybody's palate,'' she says.

That means everyone from her husband, Allen, 84, to the youngest of her 12 grandchildren, 10-year-old Maci, and a host of family and friends in between.

One of those friends, Kathie Klarreich, will drive with her 16-year-old son from Key Biscayne to Stolar's Boca Raton home on Monday to celebrate the Jewish New Year.

''It's just warm, it's what a holiday should be,'' says the journalist. ``You're surrounded by people who make you feel like family. Toby makes everybody feel like they're her best friend.''

Sinatra loved his high-end liquor, Sting insists on ginger root and green tea, but Stolar knows what people really want to eat -- classic comfort food.

''I keep up with the new trends, new food, but I keep going back to the regulars,'' says the caterer, who collected many of her favorites in a 2004 cookbook, Toby's Stove (PublishAmerica Press, $24.95).

A round challah at Rosh Hashana symbolizes the hope of a perfect year. Apples and honey ensure it will be sweet. Carrots (meren in Yiddish, which also means ''increase'') will be represented on Stolar's table in her tsimmes, carrot and apple pudding and brisket.

While she doesn't keep kosher and hasn't belonged to a synagogue since moving from Miami to Boca in 1987, ``I grew up in Cleveland, which had a big Jewish population. Celebrating the holiday was always a big thing. We always had friends over, every single holiday as long as I can remember.''

Her mother did the cooking, turning out homemade challah, a creamy rice pudding Stolar still dreams about and the brisket that has become her signature dish.

Stolar never cooked a thing until 1950, when she became a bride at the age of 23.

''Somebody gave me a cookbook and I started at page one,'' she says. 'It was like a sickness -- I had to try everything. I just got the feeling, `Hey, I like this.' ''

She liked it enough to become a lavish home entertainer. In 1974, divorced, with three kids and no income, she turned pro. Encouraged by friend Janet Chusmir, The Herald's late executive editor, she launched Gourmet Parties by Toby ``before all the mothers were working. Divorce makes you do a lot of things you never thought you could.''

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