I don't know about you, but for us, the holidays are all about family and food...LOTS of food! For any party we're working on, either for a Client or in our own homes, the first decision that needs to be made, is whether we'll be working with a caterer, the food will be homemade, or a combination of both. In my house, it's a fairly intimate and manageable group of close family members (just 6 adults and my 2 year old daughter), so I totally use it as an opportunity to get creative and try out some new recipes. This is one of those "do as I say, not as I do" scenarios though, because unless you are really confident in your abilities and/or your family is really forgiving, it's best to go with items that you know are crowd pleasers.
Loosely following my husband's family's Lithuanian tradition of a Christmas Eve that consists of a meatless "12 course" full day of eating, I was busy, busy, busy with cooking and prepping. I wanted to share with you some of our hits, sorta misses, and just some tips and advice for your next family food fest. Let me be very clear before we get into this...we take a lot of liberties with "12 courses" (crab dip with crackers may each count as one depending on how the menu is shaping up). I think once you see all of the food below, you'll understand why! And it was still way too much food!
Loosely following my husband's family's Lithuanian tradition of a Christmas Eve that consists of a meatless "12 course" full day of eating, I was busy, busy, busy with cooking and prepping. I wanted to share with you some of our hits, sorta misses, and just some tips and advice for your next family food fest. Let me be very clear before we get into this...we take a lot of liberties with "12 courses" (crab dip with crackers may each count as one depending on how the menu is shaping up). I think once you see all of the food below, you'll understand why! And it was still way too much food!
The first dish that we served was a Pulled BBQ Spaghetti Squash with coleslaw on a buttermilk biscuit. This course, along with a few others, was a nod to my sister and brother-in-law and their southern wedding from this past summer (you can see photos from that event in our party portfolio). Came across the idea of using spaghetti squash as a replacement for pulled pork a while ago, and figured we'd give it a whirl. I think we all pretty much agreed that it was tasty and a great alternative for a meatless meal, but less exciting than some of the awesome seafood dishes, and will be relegated to a more typical Meatless Monday meal.
.This next course was BY FAR my favorite course! I absolutely love sushi and all things tuna, so these little sushi cups were guaranteed to be a win in my book. I would love to say that I came up with this recipe idea on my own, but you can find these all over Pinterest. My tip to you...if someone else has perfected a technique, capitalize on their experience and make it your own! I'm very familiar with using tuna, so I was very comfortable creating the tuna filling for the sushi cup and will totally get creative with it in the future. As for the rice cup portion, I stuck to the easy to follow recipe, and they turned out perfect!
Just look at this little mouthful of perfection...my mouth is watering just thinking about them!
A helpful tip if you want to make these for one of your next events - go ahead and make the rice cup portion a day in advance and just keep them covered in your fridge. Even the tuna mixture can be made the morning of your party and kept in a bowl, just hold off on adding the sauce and avocado to the end to ensure everything stays nice and bright and fresh. Right before people arrive, place the rice cups on a platter and add your tuna mixture to them for a delicious and healthy appetizer.
A helpful tip if you want to make these for one of your next events - go ahead and make the rice cup portion a day in advance and just keep them covered in your fridge. Even the tuna mixture can be made the morning of your party and kept in a bowl, just hold off on adding the sauce and avocado to the end to ensure everything stays nice and bright and fresh. Right before people arrive, place the rice cups on a platter and add your tuna mixture to them for a delicious and healthy appetizer.
Up next, we've got some more appetizers that were good to put out so everyone could nosh on them as we were continuing to get ready to leave for Christmas Eve mass. The fun thing with both of these, is that they were both an attempt at trying to recreate a menu items from a couple of different local favorites restaurants. Bubbly hot in the casserole dish is a crab and cauliflower dip. I tried to get the actual recipe from the restaurant, but all I got was an offer to make a to-go order for us. Where's the challenge in that?! I created a fairly standard crab dip, but added riced cauliflower. I was aiming for a bit more crab forward dip with some texture, that wasn't just swimming in cheese, and it was successful, I just made way too much! The other dish (which admittedly did NOT photograph well) was an "avocado boat" (avocado halves filled with kani), which was made primarily because my little mini me loves it when we go out, and then didn't even eat a bite of it on Christmas Eve. Key learning is don't let a 2 year old dictate anything on your menu, hahaha!
Are you getting full yet?! Next course was Thai style mussels. We do these almost every year, and we do them for so many family style dinners. They are affordable, super fast to cook, take on whatever flavors you're feeling like, and most importantly aresuper yummy. If you and your family like shellfish, mussels are a great way to go!
Well obviously we needed a salad, right? It's a salad, this one requires no explanation other than, I'm pretty sure we need to include a salad just to make ourselves feel better for eating so much food. Now moving on...
And here it is; our last official course, BBQ'd Shrimp and Grits (don't worry, to get to "12 courses" there was garlic bread, cookies, cocktails, wine, and probably even more that I'm leaving out!). We made this one our main course because we knew this was the crowd favorite. Grits take a little while, especially because you need to babysit them, constantly stirring, but they were cheesy and oh so worth it! The shrimp however...cook in less than 5 minutes, and as long as you don't completely overcook them, they are really hard to mess up. If you have an opportunity to do a little southern cooking, definitely include shrimp and grits on your menu!
This little one takes her food pretty serious as well, and she wanted to make sure Santa and his reindeer would be well fed. We probably should've just left him some of our leftovers!
I hope you enjoyed taking this journey through my Christmas Eve culinary feast, and are feeling as ridiculously full as I am right now thinking about the obscene amount of food. We've already started discussing next year's menu and how we're going to pare it down to be less glutinous. Hopefully I can remember that full feeling when the time comes again!
Till next time!
xoxo
Adrienne
I hope you enjoyed taking this journey through my Christmas Eve culinary feast, and are feeling as ridiculously full as I am right now thinking about the obscene amount of food. We've already started discussing next year's menu and how we're going to pare it down to be less glutinous. Hopefully I can remember that full feeling when the time comes again!
Till next time!
xoxo
Adrienne
