This is my report on our office party which we held this past Thursday evening. Our local Chamber of Commerce holds an office open house at one of the local businesses every month or two, and this time was our turn! Since I blathered on about the thing for months, I thought it was only fair to report on how it went, along with pictures. I owe a big debt of gratitude to the numerous TTOL members who gave me recipe suggestions and advice! Thanks much!! <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/handshake.gif" alt="" /> We had approximately 40 people show up for the party, which was certainly a reasonable turn out, for our small town. Most all of the recipes here were recommended by TTOL members.

I prepared ALL the food and designed and prepared all the platters. Eric helped immeasurably by doing most of my cutting and chopping and measuring of vegetables and fruits and other ingredients, by carving the cantaloupes and the shrimp boat and by doing the all around heavy lifting. Here is a picture of us before the party actually started, with most of the food in place.


I had a couple of ladies who helped me with the serving, making sure the platters remained filled, drinks in place, garbage policed and doing general clean up afterwards. Unfortunately, I didn’t get too many pictures after the party started, and I didn’t get any pictures of my helper ladies. However, here are a couple of general crowd shots, early on.





One of my helper ladies took some pictures, but I haven’t seen them yet, so I’m not sure what pictures she was able to get. Everyone seemed to have a really nice time and was very complementary of the food. I have attached links to the recipes for the various dishes, for those that are interested and would like to print out the recipes.

Here is a picture of the table

,

and this was the menu, starting at the right of the table and moving left:

1) Meatballs—store-bought meatballs, with sauce consisting of 2/3 BBQ sauce and 1/3 apricot preserves

2) Paula Deen Hot artichoke dip http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/three-cheese-hot-artichoke-dip-recipe/index.html



(Sorry, I did not get any particularly good pictures of these)

3) Barefoot Contessa roasted shrimp cocktail



http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/roasted-shrimp-cocktail-recipe/index.html ,

with the shrimp boat behind courtesy of Eric

4) Veggie plate with Periwinkle’s dill dip


Dill dip recipe



served in Pat’s red cabbage bowl

5) Fruit tray, featuring Pat’s pineapple arrangement



Pat's pineapple arrangement

accented by hibiscus flowers from my garden



6) Devilled eggs (my recipe),

accented by carved cantaloupe, courtesy of Eric’s carving mastery

7) Chocolate pretzel bites by Periwinkle (behind)

[img]http://www.info-res.com/ehill/ttol/temp/party92310/party8.jpg[/img]

chocolate pretzel bites

accented by carved cantaloupe by Eric

8) Gorgonzola, apple, and cranberry bites, by Orange Burst, in front of the chocolate pretzel bites.

Gorgonzola phyllo bites

9) Iced tea, wine, beer, water


With regard to the portion sizes of the dishes, I have here just reproduced the links to the original recipes, not the amounts which I actually produced for the party. We had the party on Thursday night and 6 people at my office ate leftovers for lunch the next day. References hereafter to leftovers are after the ‘after party’ the next day. For the meatballs, we had approximately 180 meatballs, and we had approximately 2 dozen left. For the artichoke dip, I prepared 3 trays of artichoke dip (which computed to be SEVEN times the recipe), and I had one tray left, which we divided between us and a girlfriend of mine (who is probably serving it while watching the Gators tonight! <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Grin.gif" alt="" />). I made 6 pounds of shrimp and had approximately 1 dozen shrimp left over. I tripled the recipe for the cocktail sauce and basically had TWICE as much cocktail sauce as needed. I doubled the recipe for the dill dip and again had approximately half left, and had quite a few veggies left. For the devilled eggs, I fixed 24 eggs (resulting in 48 pieces) and had zero left. For the chocolate pretzel bites, I made a double batch of MILK chocolate and a single batch of DARK chocolate ones. I have maybe a third of those left—which is no tragedy, since they freeze beautifully. For the gorgonzola bites, I made a double batch and had about a half dozen left.

I was very happy with the entire menu. The only thing I wasn’t ecstatic with was the dill dip (sorry Periwinkle!!), as I thought it was OK, but somewhat bland. I did not want to use the Accent, because of MSG and could not find the Beau Monde, and did not want to go the trouble of making it, so I basically just put some salt in and left it go. It did LOOK beautiful in the purple cabbage though!! Other than that, I could very happily serve the exact same menu again at a future party.

Thanks for listening and thanks to ALL who helped with the planning of the menu, as I know I could not have done it without you guys!!! Thanks again!!