Monday, December 21, 2009

How Not to Cater for a Party

Well it finally happened. Last Friday I graduated after 6 years. On Saturday I had a party for 70 of my friends and family who I had made suffer throughout my study. I was highly organised. I had all my colour-coordinated plates in pink and yellow tones that I had collected over the past few years, all lined up and ready:

Then everything went wrong. There was ham and mango salsa that didn't even make it to the table . . .

Nor did the camembert and quince paste on wheatmeal biscuits that I forgot about till everyone had gone home . . .

This is only a quarter of the 8 kilograms of prawns. There were 16 dozen oysters of which barely anything was eaten . . .

There were five of these quiches (thanks, Bob, for trying to style it for me, but the bin and tea towel got into the photo somehow), and six fritattas, which hardly anyone touched . . .

Then there were three of these gigantic pizzas, of which two remained untouched:

That's because I also ordered 100 each of satay chicken sticks, spring rolls, curry puffs and fish cakes, which were quite a hit (Sorry I don't have any pictures of them). Not to mention a gigantic flourless chocolate cake, a citron tart, a triple chocolate cake and a whole lot of Madeleines:


Luckily I have many family members and friends to help eat the leftovers. The moral of this story is: Decide what you want and divide it by four and you'll probably be OK. Then you won't be left with 4 dozen oysters and 4 kilos of prawns hiding at the bottom of your fridge after everyone's gone home.

9 comments:

Cherie said...

Ohhh I don't mean to sound awful but that's hysterical ... and something we've all done! Congrats on graduating, please tell more ;)

Tina said...

Congratulations on Graduating Beth! Sorry the catering didn't go as planned! Thanks for the catering tip, will use it when I graduate in 2 years time:) If it is any consolation - the food looks FABULOUS and you DID graduate -Yay you!! So happy to have found your blog. Merry Xmas!

Unknown said...

Well done, 4 years, thats a marathon!!
What a wonderful display of food, luckily it can be eaten for christmas!
I have done that before,many times.Always forgetting something!
Sue

Amanda said...

Congratulations on graduating Beth! What were you studying? 70 people is a lot to organise food for - I am never very good at judging the amount of food to serve a small number of guests let alone 70! Hope you have a fabulous Christmas and I look forward to more posts of yours in the New Year x

My Notting Hill said...

Sounds delicious! Wish I could come over to finish it off.

Michelle said...

woo hoooo party at your place !! I'll be right there ! Looks delish....congratuations on your graduation.

beth said...

Thanks everyone for your congratulations and kind words. The graduation was for a PhD in English literature, on British author, A. S. Byatt :)

Iris said...

Good on you, Dr. Beth!! What a fantastic day :-)

Low Tide High Style said...

Belated congratulations on your graduation! Your story made me laugh because we hosted a Christmas party this year for about 50 people and had the exact same thing happen...too much food! I ended up sending lots of little "doggie" bags home with everyone who would take one, and then we ate leftovers until we were all finally sick of everything!

Kat :)

P.S. With a PhD in English, you'll cringe at my first comment on your blog where I left the "r" off of "your"!!!

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