Tuesday, August 26, 2008

It's all about the food

The dieting portion of this blog is temporarily suspended. Continue reading at your own risk.

If you’re going to throw a party, be sure to have good food and plenty of it. That’s my daughter’s philosophy, and I think it’s pretty good advice.

The members of the group who will be here Thursday night are middle-aged and older, so I think mostly traditional appetizers are in order. We’ll have Swedish meatballs and those little sausages cooked in a sweet-and-sour sauce, along with artichoke dip, hummus with vegetables and crackers, a bowl of cinnamon-spiced nuts and a fruit pizza.

Cupcakes are on the menu. Cupcakes sure seem to be popular these days – Google Blogsearch came up with 1,181,447 hits and amazon.com is selling a boatload of cupcake cookbooks.

Mine are plain old chocolate, and will be decorated with the words “Yes We Can” on top. I think some will be iced in blue and some in white, with red lettering.

I’m also making pig candy. I first had this at one of my daughter’s Oscar parties several years ago. The serving plate was empty in mere minutes. If you’ve never made it, it’s super-simple and absolutely delish!

We don’t drink alcohol, but will have soda, tea, coffee and lemonade for thirst-quenching.

So there you have it. I’m leaving all the inspiration for the speech (wasn’t Teddy Kennedy inspiring last night?); the food is part of the background.

I received a packet of material from the Obama for Change headquarters yesterday, including a sign that our group is supposed to pose with. They want party photos to use on their blog. I’m trying to think of some creative way to pose our guests so our picture will actually be posted.

I thought maybe I’d have everyone stand on the stairs and shoot it from below, but the light in the stairwell isn’t so great. I also might stand on a ladder, just to get a different angle (I bet a thousand other photographers use that trick). I also thought I might have everyone make a silly face, but this crowd might not get into the spirit of silliness. (My fairly prim-and-proper husband would probably die if I suggested it, actually. Wouldn’t want that.)

Must. Think. Harder.

Any ideas? I wish you all could be here!

3 comments:

Lori G. said...

I've been invited to an Obama party; I just thought it was an off the cuff thing (she has a ginormous plasma HD TV). She's already feeling anxious about it; maybe I should be mean and ask her if she has any goody bags planned. (No,I won't; that would be mean.)

It sounds like fun; too bad you're so far away from me.

denise said...

I suppose getting your guests to pose doing the "Yes we can-can" dance would be out of the question, huh?

How big is the sign? It would be cool to somehow pose people so only their heads showed all around the sign...although I don't know how you'd do that exactly.

Or maybe you have a few people holding your own banner that says "The Middle of Nowhere supports Obama"!

Obviously, my idea machine is not hitting on all cylinders today, but if I think of any GOOD ideas, I'll let you know.

The party sounds great. Cupcakes remind me of how my mother always used to make them to take to school on our birthdays (they did that sort of thing back in the 60's). She would always back them in an ice cream cone. That was kind of a cool and different way to do it. And, she didn't have to do anything special with the cupcake because putting it in the ice cream cone made it special enough!

Anyway, good luck. I guess I'll read about the convention in the news, as I just moved this weekend and won't have cable until the middle of next week - so I'm learning to live with the challenge of no television. Turns out you get a lot more done that way!

ws said...

you could have five guests paint their chest to spell OBAMA like college students at a basketball game. Oh wait, you wanted tasteful. I guess none of my ideas will work.

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