Easy Party Foods

Last night Kendel taught a class on easy party food.

I missed the class, but got to help with the prep work. These cooking classes take a lot of preparation. This was his example of simple decorating. Use solid colored linens and serving dishes, then make centerpieces from things from your garden and frig. He brought the art glass pieces from home. I love the yellow striped tall vase and bowl.

He also demonstrated making edible centerpieces. These were lots of fun and turned out really well.

Put a head of lettuce in an urn. Pineapple slices cut with a cookie cutter, topped with a melon ball on a bamboo skewer make the flowers. Grapes and strawberries threaded on skewers add some height and color. We filled in the spaces with leaves off a lime tree. Cute, isn't it? And easy to make. We figure it took about an hour of time to put together.

This is another centerpiece/buffet decoration we constructed.

Start with a ball of floral foam, put it on a dowel rod and anchor it in a pot or bowl filled with more foam. Cover the foam ball with leaves (we hot-glued bay laurel leaves onto it). Then stick a toothpick into the foam, leaving about 2/3 of the pick sticking out. Impale a strawberry onto the toothpick. Repeat and repeat until you have the ball covered. We filled in the gaps with bay laurel tips.

In my next post I will tell you about all the delicious ( and beautiful) food he made for this class.

Kendel will be doing a "Holiday Entertaining" class on October 22 if you want to get more great ideas. As a former caterer, he has lots of tips on cooking and decorating for a crowd with going crazy.