Last weekend I helped my friend cook for her mom’s surprise 60th birthday party. The theme was country-inspired – think bandannas, plaid shirts, jeans, cowboy boots, etc. – and the menu had a lot of comfort foods. We cooked for quite a few hours and, with the help of a few friends and relatives, were pretty efficient with getting everything done on time and serving the courses on time. I am going to post the menu with some comments about how the food turned out and a few recipes because I would definitely consider making these again if I had a party with a lot of people. The recipes are very easy to add to, easy to make, and re-heat well. The food was enough to feed about 25-30 people and then-some, and from what she told me she was able to keep the food under $300 or $200- not bad at all.
Drinks
-Assorted beers
-Assorted sodas
-Red wine sangria
-Tropical fruit punch (recipe below)
Appetizers
-Veggies and dip
-Sliced fruit
-Beer bread with dip
-7 layer dip
-Pita triangles with hummus, cucumber, and dill
-Chips and dip
Dinner
-A big green salad with toppings on the side bacon, cheese, dressings, and homemade croutons
-Beef tenderloin use a probe thermometer so it doesn’t overcook!
-Chicken skewers
-Vegetarian chili my own recipe
-Alton Brown’s Stovetop Mac n’ Cheese link & comments below
-Cornbread link & comments below
Dessert
-Vanilla and chocolate sheet cake from Wegmans Highly recommended. Very moist, fresh-tasting, and the icing wasn’t too sweet.
-Assorted sliced fruit
-Coffee
Tropical fruit punch
This is an original recipe made by me and results were surprisingly good. Buy a big bag of frozen fruit because it is cheaper than using several small bags, and try to find Goya juices to use.
Mix one 12oz can of Juicy Juice tropical fruit punch concentrate, one 12oz can of mango juice, one 12oz can of passion fruit juice, one 12oz can of pineapple juice, and one 12oz can of guava juice in a 2.5gal plastic container or punch bowl. Add 12oz of water. Add about half of a big bag of frozen mixed fruit and a few lemons, oranges, limes, apples, and pears cut into slices. (I squeezed some of the juice from the citrus fruits directly into the container, too.) Add a few handfuls of maraschino cherries and about one cup of the cherry juice to the mix.
Next, add the alcohol. I used about 36-48oz of Skyy vodka, about 6oz triple sec, and about 6oz Midori. Seems like a lot, but it is for a crowd and it is going to be balanced out with the addition of soda before drinking. Rum could probably be swapped for the vodka, if you like rum punches, but I didn’t want to add even more sweetness to this mix since it was already sweet enough from the fruit and syrups.
Before serving the punch, add soda and stir. I recommend club soda or seltzer since they won’t add additional sweetness, but ginger ale or lemon-lime soda could also be used. Alternatively, if you are worried about the soda going flat in the punch mix, don’t add the soda to the whole batch. Leave the base mixture in the container and put a bottle of soda next to it with instructions to pour 3oz of the mix and top with 3oz of soda, depending on how strong you want your drink to be and how big your cups are. Believe me, the mix is sweet, so half and half is a decent ratio. DO NOT try to drink the mix BEFORE adding the soda because it will be very sweet and boozy!!!
Alton Brown’s Stovetop Mac n Cheese
Link to recipe
This is one of the best macaroni and cheese recipes I’ve made. I first made this on Thanksgiving of last year with excellent results, and we decided to make it again for the party. We quadrupled the recipe (2lbs of pasta, 40oz of cheese, 2 cans of evaporated milk, etc.) and made two slightly-different varieties: one that just had a blend of cheddar cheeses in it with elbow pasta, and another made with blue cheese and a blend of cheddar cheeses with penne pasta. Cracker Barrel cheddar cheeses are recommended because they have such an intense flavor, but use any kind of cheddar that will melt nicely.
Cornbread
Link to recipe
We tripled this cornbread recipe with excellent results. It was enough to make one big pan (about 13×9, maybe a little bit bigger), plus a small 8×8 pan. Cornbread was very moist and perfectly cooked. This is probably one of the better cornbread recipes I’ve made from scratch.