I really didn’t need any more ideas, I had plenty of my own, but I thought I might pick up a few tips from the “Cater Your Own Party” class sponsored by South Arkansas Community College. The instructor, Sherri Odom, was as funny as Erma Bombeck and as laid back as Julia Child. She made everything look fun and easy.
I left the first class eager to try everything: a cheese ball, party punch, mini-muffins and the vegetable, floral arrangement.
I also left ready to go to her favorite shopping spot to buy the kitchen equipment she had used. After she described her, favorite but inexpensive paring knife, I commented to the other 16 women, “So when you all go to buy one of these knives tomorrow and they aren’t there, remember we all heard about it today.”
My daughter tagged along to the second class and was infected with Odom party fever in the worst possible way. For her wedding she wanted to replicate the mini-quiches made in the muffin tins. I gulped – that is a lot of mini-quiches to make. A few days later, I went shopping for mini-muffin tins. Every place I checked was sold out, as was the paring knife Odom had touted.
My son finally found a couple tins at an El Dorado hardware store the weekend the St. Louis Hershbergers came to visit.
We declared their visit a cooking and testing day. We decided to make samples of wedding punches, whip up a few trays of quiches and combine Styrofoam, vegetables, toothpicks and skewers for an elaborate, edible display. From such humble beginnings our tasting party snowballed.
What about dyeing bread dough red, white and blue. What about making round shaped party bread? I began measuring yeast and pulled out my rarely-used, round, glass bread tube. I was game to make round, party bread, but it sure would be nice to have found a couple similar bread tubes to speed up the process. They are as elusive as Odom’s favorite paring knife.
We stocked up on fruits and vegetables, heated sugar and water for punch and everyone began cooking. It was as easy as Odom made it look. However, while a lot of little things don’t take much time by themselves, all together they take a lot of time.
My daughter made tart crust for the quiches. I fried bacon in the oven. I had my daughter-in-love and son grab a muffin pan each and start lining the cups with tart dough. We all made loaves of bread.
Did you know a whole bottle of cheap, blue food coloring in one loaf of bread dough looks just like blue Play-Dough?
I cut up vegetables and began pinning curly leaf lettuce onto the Styrofoam shape. When I finished it did make a rather dramatic display – in a Dr. Seuss sort of way with massacred radish roses, broccoli balanced awkwardly on toothpicks and the cherry tomatoes’ cucumber cuffs sliding down their toothpicks.
It was a good thing we tested our ideas at home, with loving, forgiving friends and family. The quiches disappeared. Everyone admired the red, white and aqua marine blue bread and those who tested it, declared it tasted just like white, homemade bread.
Given a choice between two punches, the one with the drowned strawberries won over the one with the drowned bananas. We all had Odom-like fun in the kitchen tossing together a few things. It was also fun afterwards to sit around and chat and know it was okay to say, “this I liked, and that was not what I expected.”
Later, I made my first cheese ball. It was so easy, plus looked and tasted so good, that I nearly sprained my shoulder patting myself on the back, I was that pleased with it and myself.
Now, all I have to decide is whether to get busy baking and cooking – or find a caterer who can top my Dr. Seuss vegetable arrangement.