We’ve mentioned several times that we will be having a relatively large housewarming party which has had us a bit concerned and almost overwhelmed at times…but we are slowly but surely figuring it all out. Last Thursday we finally sat down and mapped out what we will feed the more than 50 people who have confirmed they’ll be attending and how we can best coordinate everything. We’ve thrown two much smaller parties with more than 10 guests (but not more than 30) and each time have found that we were so busy entertaining people and talking to guests that the food never got started at the right moment. We don’t want to focus all our attention on food details and didn’t want to ask someone else to focus on all of it…nor do we want to hire a caterer since that will just cost a fortune – so we decided to create a fairly simple menu but that should still be satisfying.
Finger foods
- Small sandwiches on baguettes
- Veggies & ranch dip
- Tomatoes and mozzarella (hopefully with tomatoes from our own garden!)
- Antipasto platter
- Breads, fresh pretzels, etc (from the local bakery)
Soups
Salads
- Fresh tossed salad with dressings on the side
- Pasta salad
“Dessert”
- Homemade muffins (maybe with some of the gooseberries & currents from this year’s harvest?)
- Fruit salad (perhaps something like this?)
We’ll have all of this set up in our kitchen so people can roam in and out and we can control flies a bit better. This will also allow us to have the chili and potato soup sitting on the burner and not need to buy a hot plate. We are fairly certain our kitchen should be plenty large for this and will have a big seating area outside, covered by a tent just in case the weather should get unpleasant.
We decided to have the party on the same night as the local lantern festival here in town and there will be a parade at 9:30 pm which we’ll encourage everyone to attend. The parade route actually passes about a block away from us so we should be able to just wander down when we hear the parade.
On Friday I started buying things for the party such as paper plates and bowls and plastic eating utensils. We couldn’t really find any places that rented them and it would be a whole lot of stuff to wash before giving it all back on Monday which also isn’t really a pleasant idea. So the disposable way just seems easiest. I also went by IKEA and picked up a few serving trays, bread baskets and wine glasses for next to nothing which is one of the reasons that store just can’t be avoided.
We’ve got less than two weeks to go and lots more things we want to get accomplished before then but most of them are relatively small so we’re not stressing yet. We will make the chili and freeze it this weekend and then prepare most everything else on Friday and Saturday before the party. We’ll have a few guests that arrive already on Friday evening so we should have plenty of extra helpers on Saturday for whatever we may need to get done…I think we’re both starting to look forward to the even quite a bit! 🙂
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