Party food
 

I need to bring something to a party tomorrow night. I was going to make my famous 7 layer dip, but some other broad is bringing it.

What's your favorite snack/appetizer at parties?

Go with your strong suit, make her change.

Made Creme Brulee the other night, was a fine excuse to bring out the blowtorch after dinner. Dessert as performance art. I kinda cheated though, I used a box mix that had the dried custard part and a little packet of sugar for the topping. Very well received.

Mix plus ingredients came to about $.80 per serving, but that doesn't include the cost of the rammekins I indulged in.

For winter dipping I like a nice, hot dip. Go that route. There's tons but I like a bubbly chili/cheese dip. Go hot. They'll love it.

Mmmmm, hot snacks! Good idea. Max easy, 1 bottle fave flav BBQ sauce, 1 pkg Lil Smokies, microwave til steaming, then garnish with colored party picks.

Tasty, sweet, hot, easy.

Or cheeses cubed, with meats also cubed, cheddar, jack, and some summer sausage, salami, pepperoni. Smoked meats and cheeses are gooooooood too.

Smoked salmon. Good enough to stand alone. I wind up having to buy two so I can get one intact to the table.

There's always oysters. A personal favorite of mine, but rarely lasts long. They're expensive too, unless you can get them close to the source.

Close to lunchtime here, can you tell? :yum:

I should probably wait until I'm at home to do this... but i had this clam dip last weekend and I bought a little mix for it. I can't remember the name of the company that makes it, but you get the clams and the spice - just add your own cream cheese and mayonaise. It's fabulous!

I will post the name when I get it...

Can't have it anymore due to Crohn's disease, but my favorite party snack ever is bacon-wrapped water chestnuts. Recipe on the side of the can, but you really don't need it. Just wrap a half piece of bacon around a water chestnut, and hold it in place with a toothpick. Broil in the oven till the bacon looks good.

Really yum.

WOW! Lot's of great ideas... keep 'em coming! I'll have all day tomorrow to decide who the winner is! Not that this was a competition, but whatever.

Hey dar, a fellow Crohnie. :D I was diagnosed this last August. Sucks, but I'm alive!

You can't get much easier than 8 oz (dry) of elbow macaroni (cooked), 1" - 1.5" off of a velveeta block and a can of Wolf Brand chili. Multiply as necesary.

If you have a chinese grocery store nearby, dumplings make the ultimate party food, I've found. You can buy bags of 25 or so at the store; easiest is to boil them, but I prefer fried (which takes a bit more effort - I can instruct if that might actually happen for you).

If no access to an ethnic store, many supermarkets carry commercial brands of shui mai (that's how they sometimes spell it; it's actually 'xiao mai,' pronounced 'shao my'), those little round shrimp and pork dumplings served at dim sum. Those should be steamed.

And if you can't find any of that - time to roll up the sleeves and make 'em! I do a dumpling party every year or so, but only once have I actually tried making the skins. Easiest to buy them pre-packaged, but when you're short on resources, you must go to extremes.

The kicker is the dipping sauce. I use:
Chopped garlic
Crushed red pepper (or chili oil)
Chopped scallions
Soy sauce (straight up kikoman, none of that low sodium nonsense)
Rice vinegar
Sesame oil

[2 cents]

That is my favorite dipping sauce of all time but every time I try to make it I screw it up. What are the exact proportions of seasame oil/soy (I use mushroom soy) and rice vinegar???

Well, if you want to cheat you can always buy a can of Rambutan stuffed with pineapple at an Asian grocery. A rambutan is a cousin of the lychee fruit. It's not quite as sweet, so they sell it with a pineapple wedge inserted into the hole left when it was pitted, like a pimento in an olive.

It's a ready-made snack. Just stick in a toothpick.

FYI, a logan is a slightly sweeter cousin of the lychee.

I've tried all three and they are all good.

I would say maybe ...
Soy sauce 5
Vinegar 2
Sesame oil 1.5

Oil is usually the "dealbreaker." It's needed to bring out flavor in cooked dishes, but too much in sauce is gross.

the name of the company that makes this dip is blue crab bay... www.bluecrabbay.com.

There are also these crackers available at SuperWalmart that are Sam's Choice Beer Cheese crackers. OMG! They are soooo good!

How do you get Crohn's disease? Is it just something that happens or is it caused by something like smoking/bad eating etc. A relation of mine has it and I want to reduce the genetic probability that I'll get it, if I can.

I was wondering that myself. A friend who has it recently underwent surgery to have a part of his stomach removed. Grossness.

From Answers.com:

No positive answers on this yet. They have determined, however, that there are genetic markers for Crohn's. So the current suspicion is that it is a genetic predisposition and some sort of environmental trigger.

I also subscribe to the DNA theory. I get most of my information from here and it's mostly reliable. My doctor claims that smoking is a negative factor in Crohns' and diet is a major player. I'll go with the diet, but I smoke and it doesn't seem to have affected me one way or the other. Other than the usual deleterious effects of course. :yelsick:

Mostly I watch what I eat (but sometimes I cheat ;) ) and stay close to the bathroom. No surgeries yet, thank Bob.

Welcome to the club chainsaw. :)

Brian

Oh, I make a crab and cream cheese dip that is always popular at parties but it's served cold. I will share that recipe if you wish. The dish was even gobbled at a KOSHER party!

I was taunted with calls of TRAFE! (or however it's spelled) but I noticed that MY dish was the first one to disappear. I waited until the end of the party to rmind them that they were KOSHER JEWS and they were in trouble with the Big Guy for breaking the dietary laws and I would be calling their rabbi when I got home. Then I realized that someone stole the pan the dish came in too. So they're in trouble three ways...one for not telling me it was a kosher do, for eating shellfish anyway and for swiping my favorite little casserole dish. Now I know who those three seats next to mine in Hell are for ;)

Brian

Another party favorite of mine (that hopefully won't stir IBS or give you Crohn's-style shits) is a cold sesame noodle salad. Easy to make, easy to variate, and usually goes pretty quickly.

Reminds me of a joke:

A priest and a rabbi happen to be sitting together at one of the town's ecumenical breakfasts. The priest notices that the rabbi is keeping kosher and asks, "So, rabbi. In your life, have you ever cheated and eaten some ham?" The rabbi admits that he did. Then the rabbi asks the priest, "How about you? When you were younger, did you ever have sex?" The priest admits that he did, once. The rabbi pauses for a second and then says, "It's better than ham, wouldn't you say?"

So, chainsaw. What did you decide to take?

Thanks all for the super suggestions! I ended up taking the Lil' Smokies drown in Jim Beam BBQ sauce - super yummy. They went quick, but the key is to keep them HOT. Next time I'll keep them in a crock pot. And I took a couple wedges of brie, dumped some pesto and pine nuts on top and nuked a little. Served with crackers of course. Everyone loved it.

And by the way, the stupid girl that brought the 7 layer dip BLEW IT. She used store bought guacamole and salsa! Major no no! And she didn't season the sour cream like I do. Her dish was more than half full at the end of the night. Ha ha!

I am going to try the crab dip next time! Sounds yummy!

My doctors don't know how I got it. I've never smoked and have always been a pretty healthy eater. It's a mystery. My diet has changed drastically. I can't handle any type of fiber - almost no raw fruits or veggies, no nuts or grains. I'm pretty much on the opposite of the Atkins diet. White flour (bread, pasta), lots of rice... No lactose either. The only fruit I can stomach is banana, and only a half at a time and veggies have to be cooked to mush. But it's weird, I can eat something today and be fine, then eat the same thing tomorrow and be in agony. Stupid stupid stupid. :mad2: Very frustrating.

From the stories I've read, my case is very mild. I cannot imagine what a bad case would be like. As it is, I have between 3-15 BMs a day! But I'm alive and functioning fairly normally. :D If you see me heading for the bathroom GET OUTTA MY WAY!

BrianR too.

BTW, I have a few recipes I converted to be low-fiber. If you or Brian are interested I'll post.

Purely anecdotal evidence, Cat, but I would go easy on foods that you think you might be allergic to. If you ever eat a lot of something and you end up spending a lot of time in the bathroom, I'd go easy on it.

I had easy access to a lot of chocolate for a couple of months when I was in my late teens. My Crohn's symptoms started showing up not long after. May have nothing to do with it, but I have often wondered if that was the trigger for me.

Absolutely! I'll try anything.

I bet in five years they find it's bacterial, just like they finally figured out with ulcers.

I have ulcers in my colon... see! :D Probably not very nice of me to post this in a food thread, but hey...

Oh god ... someone should remain this thread to "party conversations" because this thread resembles a dialogue at a drunk party, the only time one might somehow link crab dip with colon ulcers.

Or viral. There are theories involving the measles virus (live vaccine), and also the myco-bacterium paratubercolosis in cow milk.