Greg and Kat's blog

So Greg blogged about his camera set-up, and I guess it’s finally time that I blogged about the food that we had at our open house. In typical Kat fashion, I planned for WAY too much food. But, it’s better to have too much than too little! 🙂

So, here’s what we had out: (links to recipes where we can)

• Mulled Apple Cider
• Beer, Cheese, and Potato Soup [*]
• Veggie tray with French Onion Dip
• Hot Artichoke Dip with Pita Chips
• Assorted Cheese
• Assorted Meats, including very tasty sausage from Moccia
• Olives
• Bread and Crackers
• Cheese Straws
• Greg’s Potato Salad
• Shrimp with Alton Brown’s Cocktail Sauce
• Smoked Salmon
• Veggie Pockets and Beef Pockets from the Golden Pita
• BBQ Beef and Chicken Skewers
• Nuts
• Mandarin Oranges
• Pomegranate Seeds
• Chocolate Zucchini Loaf
• Butter Tarts [*]
• Trifle [*] [Edit: full recipe posted]
• Assorted Cookies

Here’s what we had left over:

• 3 L apple cider
• 5 lbs beef skewers
• 3 lbs chicken skewers
• 2 sides of salmon (which we were going to cook on the BBQ)
• the makings for 180 mini crab quiche
• mini sausages
• 2 medium wheels of brie
• cream puffs
• 3 Costco-sized boxes of frozen appetizers (which we bought in case we didn’t have enough food!)

So yeah, I guess we went a little overboard on the amount of food. Greg thinks that for next year we should have twice as much of half as many things. I, on the other hand, like the variety, so I’m thinking we should have the same amount of what we had out. 🙂

* from Greg

A few notes from me…

The beer/cheese/potato soup was nice, but I’ll never make it again in a million years. Because of the melted cheese, it fused to every surface it touched. I washed the slow cooker it was in three times, and Kat still rewashed it because it wasn’t clean.

For the butter tarts, I usually make a double pie shell worth of crust and double the recipe there. This time I doubled again because Kat encouraged me. 🙂

The trifle has to have the best appreciation to effort ratio of any recipe I make. It’s dead easy, and everybody loves it. I use grocery store pound cake and the custard in the sidebar of the recipe (you need 1.5× that recipe). I usually double the recipe (3× the custard) and make a big bowl, because it goes fast.

For the fruit coulis, I use a 600g bag of frozen berries, a little sugar, and cornstarch. Simmer to cook, and mash if the chunks are too big. Add a free-pour of sherry once it has cooled and you have enough for a double recipe.