A very important part of a party: food

After eating ourselves through the potential food I can honestly say that we're serving bulk food. The bean gumbo in itself would be enough, but we're also having vegetarian burritos, corn dogs and corn cobs. On top of that it's rocky road. You don't need much to get full. It's good though. Food should not only taste well, but no one should leave a table still hungry.

From the start we had decided on beer, but it's so much trouble with beer. You need so much and somewhere to cool it and it turned out both expensive and difficult to store cold during a party. Wine is easier that way. We're having one simple red and one white, both in bag-in-boxes. Right after the ceremony we're having a jug drink with white sweet sparkling, cranberry juice and Cointreau. It's a lovely raspberry red drink with a cosmopolitan feeling to it, albeit more laid back.

There will be drinks for those who don't drink alcohol. After the ceremony I thought a fitting substitute would be sprite, cranberry juice and some lemon. As for dinner drinks, I'm not sure. We really should have Coca Cola considering the theme, but I suspect Darling won't approve. We'll see. Water must be available at all times of course. You shouldn't have to drink alcohol or soft drinks to quell thirst.

Back to the food

I have worked on the menu some and cooked one course. I found a vegetable gumbo with rice that sounded tasty and tried that one. After tweaking the recipe some I must say that it's a winner. Problem though is that okra isn't easy to get hold of here. They're not spectacular in any way and I don't need it to thicken the gumbo so I could leave it out. The thing that gives it the gumbo taste is the roux after all. IMO anyway. We'll see what I end up doing.

We're still having the corn cobs and the corndogs, though I haven't made a trial of those yet. I've caught a cold and cooking isn't a high priority right now. The rocky road is still on. However, I kind of want something more for variation. American food is generally not very vegetarian oriented, it's basically all about meat, meat, meat and some seafood every now and then. However, it's a different story south of the Rio Grande. Burritos? I think so. It's something people eat all over the South too, though it's imported from Mexico.

Tortillas are again easy to make and keep in the freezer. They cost very little when you make them yourself too. Fried potatoes with a chilli sauce, tomato and onion salsa, guacamole, cucumber sticks and kidney bean salsa were the things I was thinking about having to fill the tortilla bread with. In the gumbo we have black beans so I'm trying to vary the bean assortment here. The one thing that has to be made the same day is the fried potatoes, but that something anyone could do. The other things even get better if they're kept cold over night. Well, the cucumber is best cut up the same day too. I think this will have to do actually.

Original gumbo recipe can be found at Meatlessmonday.com