So – this year’s cookie party. Everyone came early – at 6:00 the place was packed. I think it’s just the scheduling. Because it was a Saturday and x number of days before Christmas – everyone had somewheres else to go. Party hopping, or going to a seasonal show. Al had gone to Target earlier in the day to buy socks, and he said the menswear department was empty; everyone was buying party stuff: bottles of wine, chips, paper napkins and plates with Christmas decorations on them.
The rainbow cookies were the last cookie kind again – I made them Friday and glazed and cut them up Saturday morning. I was cooking till after midnight the night before the party, but I probably left a few too many sweets for party day: glazing rainbow bars, mint brownies, stuffing dates with marzipan, and dried fruit bark. I didn’t start plattering cookies until 3:00, and I was sweating to get them all out by 5:00. And no platter pictures.
A few of the things I learned:
- Don’t need three hot dips – everybody ate the buffalo chicken and artichoke; the spinach was too much.
- I’m really glad I made the shrimp hot – black pepper shrimp, lots of butter and people could dunk bread into it – instead of the shrimp sticks.
- The pepperoni roll was my favorite – I ate the last two slices while I was cleaning up.
- Bacon dates with fresh mozzarella seemed like a good idea, but in retrospect, not so much. By the time the bacon was cooked, most of the cheese had sort of burned off, leaving the dates to look even more insect-like than usual.
- Someone either bumped into or was fiddling with the thermostat – somehow it got set to 78º – and we were all meltingly hot by 9:30, when I noticed and turned the heat off. I left it off overnight and it was still 67º by morning – of course, it only went down to like 45º that night.
- If you don’t put the deviled eggs out right away, there might even be some leftover
- Planning to make a double batch of that salmon appetizer was insane – but meant we had salmon for dinner on Friday, and extra smoked salmon at the party. I was determined to use up foodstuffs our South African house guests had left in the freezer, which included a hunk of salmon and a package of chicken (see Buffalo chicken below)
Here’s the full list of party foods, so’s maybe I can recall my lessons for next year – deviled eggs; pesto & sundried tomato and cream cheese torta; greens & feta pie – made sort of flat with crosses in the middle (I had said I was going to make kale-a-kopita, and Mark’s horrified reaction decided me to do something else with the kale); pepperoni roll with home made pizza sauce – I forgot to get the canned at Sentry and Copps didn’t have my brand (Muir Glen) which gave me enough time to realize that I had some in the freezer; cheese & crackers – the cheeses were several Goudas – aged, Farmer John’s smoked, and the Marieke with fenugreek, and a big hunk of Costco British Stilton; sausage & cheese platter with Columbus hard salami & Tillamook cheddar – also Costco – not local but good; salmon squares – smoked and cooked flaked fresh salmon, mixed with lemon juice and butter and cream, on a rye bread crumb crust, with dill and cucumbers on top – plus the extra smoked salmon on the side; my favorite spicey dill dip that has chili sauce & Worcestershire sauce in it, with yellow carrots and orange carrots and beauty heart radish from my CSA box; baked Brie with cranberries; little wienies in homemade yeasted dough, some with jalapeños; bacon-wrapped, cheese-stuffed dates; Costco brine-packed olives that I simmered in olive oil and garlic with a sprig of rosemary, and actually improved them; chex mix saved in the freezer since Thanksgiving; latkes with applesauce & sour cream – it was the last night of Hannukah; nuts; trio of hot dips, artichoke, spinach – the one that I didn’t need, and buffalo chicken; and of course – 6 platters of assorted cookies.
I made the dough for seeded flat bread, to top with leek confit and goat cheese – but I on purpose did not make those. I bought a box of Costco crab rangoons and plain forgot them – and the edamame.
On Sunday morning all I had left to clean up was the wine glasses and the baking sheet from the dates. I did the glasses in the dishwasher and sheet by hand. All the leftover cookies fit under the cake dome – although I had had to refrigerate one of the serving platters to firm up the rainbow cookies enough to pick them up.
We had breakfast – eggs & bacon and I fried three of the leftover latke potatoes – and I got started stuffing cookies into ziploc bags for shipping. Took a break to go to another librarian’s holiday party – a re-assortment of many of the same people from the night before. I took a bottle of champagne, and my sparkly tights kept slipping down on the walk over. I rifled the cabinets in our host’s bathroom and found a bobby pin to hold them up on the walk back. I went back to packing and shipping cookies, except for a break to watch Homeland. By 1:30a, I had most everything bagged, and the boxes to be UPS’d packed – the two giant ones to my bro and Chad & Lea who have moved to a goat farm in Southern Oregon to live with their daughter Liz and her beau, and the one smaller one to the former director of the library school and her husband. They used to be neighbors and walked to the party but they retired to their summer home in Canada earlier this year.
I was so asleep I didn’t even hear John & Megan come in at 2:00a.m.
Monday morning back to packing & shipping – sent the kids off, and went to UPS. By 4:00 I had packed and labeled 20 postal flat rate boxes, medium & large. Mark helped me take them to the post office – it worked a charm – I located a post office worker, said I had 20 boxes and didn’t want to jam the drop – she gave us a cart and took them direct to the back. We were in and out in less than 10 minutes.
After that I tried to accomplish stuff – I washed empty cookie bucket and containers and put them away. I baked the seeded flat bread, to cool and freeze, and topped one with butter & Parmesan – chomp. I think I was in such a state of exhaustion that I was famished – my body was so tired it thought it needed fuel. So, finish off the few last handfuls of chex mix – sure. A dozen or so M&Ms that no kids had eaten yet – why not. Broken cookies – finish the plate. I went and settled on the couch – my first time to collapse and watch TV in the evening since the beginning of cookie season – and got cats to hold me down – and lick off the cookie plate. Watched Homeland to fill in on the parts where I’d gotten dozy on Sunday – I got sleepy again, but I managed to see the parts I’d missed. Probably I just really wanted to see Mandy Pantinkin reciting mourner’s kaddish again – I think I liked that so much because of a) Mandy’s voice; and b) in the TV show, his character is taking comfort from reciting the words, even if he’s not doing it exactly the way the faith directs us – which is how I use them, too. Sort of the same thing with Downton Abby – watched two old episodes, dozed some, but saw some good parts. Think I might have to do that tonight, too.
Leftover cookies under dome
