| Tue, Sep 15, 2009 |
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| London Calling |
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If there is only one steadfast rule in party throwing it is this: You must MUST have a theme. I dare anyone to prove me wrong on this. I mean, think about the year that your own birthday parties started to take a turn towards blahsville. Around 12-years-old, right? You might have just blamed it on the pre-pubescent tendency to be too cool for everything, including your own birthday. Oh, how you were wrong, though. I guarantee it is only because that was the first year you told your mom that you were much too old to have He-man plates and matching napkins.
When the husband asked if we could do fish & chips for his birthday dinner, the plan was set into motion. |
I was really surprised at just how easy it was to amass so much British stuff in so little time...
Authentic beans from White's Country Farm and cheese from Market of Choice. |
I learned that British food isn't terribly photogenic. Considering that I hail from the land of BBQ and mushy pies, this fact doesn't deter me from knowing that just because it doesn't look pretty doesn't mean that it is any less delicious.
This was my first go at beans and toast. It won't be my last. These people know how to do breakfast. |
| No British party is complete without a new birthday Joy Division shirt. |
| The remnants of an "Anarchy in the UK" scavenger hunt. |
Now, before you think that we ate all of the food that I'm posting within a two-hour time slot, I'd like to acknowledge that this was an all-day event.
Welsh Rarebit ( snagged this recipe off of Jaime Oliver's forum, but it wasn't his)
INGREDIENTS
20g butter
1 cup grated chedder cheese
1 teaspoon mustard powder
dash of Worcestershire sauce
¼ cup of beer (Newcastle, of course)
METHOD
4 thick slices of sourdough bread or a crusty loaf of your choice, toasted. I used Tuscan Loaf; I think sourdough is just to sour for this...
Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Add cheese, mustard powder, Worcestershire sauce, and beer. Stir until smooth.
Spread over the toast and grill until bubbling if desired.
Best Rarebit recipe that I've tried yet! |
| I'm Oklahoma wedding-bound and off to pack, so I won't get around to telling you about the best fish & chips known to man. For now, it will stay a secret. Sah-ee. |
| Thu, Sep 3, 2009 |
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| Wedding Food |
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I have a complicated relationship with wedding food. No, I'm not talking about that sort of 'secretary from 1994' kind of complicated where I say things like, "Oh you're so bad for having all this delicious food and now I'm going to have to be bad and eat it ALL!" It drives me crazy when people do that. Just eat the damn macaroons or don't; there's no need to get all Cathy about it.
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| To describe what I mean by complicated we have to go back to the 80's, when I was about six. For whatever reason, I attended an exorbitant number of weddings as a child. Not only that, but I remember two summers straight where it seemed like I was also in more than I could count. I'd like to say that I was asked to be a flower girl so many times not because I was cute and of the right age, but because I was just sooooo good at it. I remember practicing with my mother and a basket of little scraps of paper: one step, drop two, one step, drop two. (Timing and petal ratio are the two key aspects of being an outstanding flower girl.) I tell you all of this not to necessarily brag about how many weddings I was in (no doubt that you're impressed though), but to set the stage of just how exciting they all seemed to be. I mean, not only did I have a starring role in the show, but I got to wear the prettiest dress of the day; after all, it was the '80s, and my dress usually far exceeded the bride's when it came to twirl factor. You add cake, balloons (again, '80s), music, and dancing to all of this, and you have yourself a perfect mix of true six-year-old excitement. When I look back on all of it though, it really is the food that made the occasion. |
| I think that every little girl has only one goal in life: to be 30, and thus sophisticated. It was at weddings that I could suspend the reality of being a kid and let my true self out, or at least what I thought was my true self. And boy-oh-boy, I fancied myself quite the elegant lady. I would feast on ice-cold jumbo shrimp laid out ceremoniously on dainty, clear plastic plates (with just a dab of cocktail sauce, of course). I would sit on a rental chair near the dance floor with said plate precariously perched on my lap and a plastic champagne flute filled with a Shirley Temple (with extra cherries). Later, if I was lucky, there would be stickiy-sauced cocktail sausages complete with toothpicks that I could carry around on a napkin while I worked the room telling my requisite dirty joke to distant relatives. These were good times, and ones that I always felt were little glimpses into my future. |
Like all of us have, I began to realize that getting older wasn't going to be nearly as elegant and sophisticated as I was sure it would be. It started with a prom, where I found myself trying to learn the two-step just because my date was cute and that is what was apparently expected of me. Midway through I remembered that I don't like to two-step and that prom was not quite what I had anticipated it would be.
It is comforting, though, to realize that as things change, they ultimately stay the same. I still attend an exorbitant number of weddings. I still look at brides through the eyes of a six-year-old and have to force myself not to trace the beading with my fingers or ask them if their dress twirls very well (I'm happy to add that most of them do these days). I still give lots of pointers about the proper way to hold a bouquet or how many petals the flower girl should drop per step. |
| But the relationship with food, sigh, has grown more complicated. For one, the food itself has come a long, long way since the '80s. The cocktail sausages have been replaced with spicy satay sticks; the jumbo shrimp are now wrapped in prosciutto. But as different as it may be, it all still sits in those familiar aluminum chaffing dishes on top of crisp catering linens, beckoning to me, pleading with me to please, please put down my bag and camera and forget about all that silly work stuff. To grab a plate (rarely plastic though) and find a chair to daintily eat and feel as sophisticated and party-like as possible. Have no fear brides, I never give in, and on hour seven when I have to eat to stay alive, it usually consists of me snarfing a roll in the kitchen while the catering crew is cutting the cake. Hardly sophisticated, but still more so than dancing the two-step. |
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