ONE WEEK has passed since Spring break started and I'm slightly amazed-cum-slightly horrified that I have been willingly and conveniently shoving aside the ton of homework dished out to us even more conveniently by the teachers. Anyway, I think this past one week has seen some progress in destressifying the self. A lot of the friends I hang out with here or appreciate hanging out with are seniors leaving for home at the end of this month so with the holidays here, what better excuse than to spend lots of time just having fun in spending time with them before they go back.
That coupled with the fact that it does get rather lonely at times living in such a spacious apartment gave me a very good excuse to 'throw' a party for my senior friends today. It's my first time really planning for a party even though it was just for 5 people and I couldn't stop worrying myself whether the food would be enough. I kept thinking it wouldn't be and kept rearranging all the different combinations of foods I could make and thinking up a menu I could go with. Which all in the end burned down to over-thinking. I planned a menu with like a starter of snacks in the form of crackers and hard toast and veggie sticks with dips, the main of wraps with toppings like veggies, ham, egg mayo and tuna mayo, an extra snack (since people are always more interested in snacking at parties) of popcorn and chocolate cake as desert. And everyone was full after the wraps we had to bypass the popcorn! I even thought it was missing a hearty dish and was even contemplating a soup or curry. This is so funny. But all in all I think I did learn some things about party planning:
1. Foods that your guests are not accustomed to eating on regular basis will not be popular. Even if you might think they taste pretty good. I guess people are just not very adventurous on average. I made an avocado dip I thought went pretty well with the crackers and basically I felt I was the only one tucking into it. My guests weren't serial consumers of tuna or thousand island (some not even knowing what thousand isle was) so there were a lot of leftovers of those. Foods like the egg mayo and ham, foods common to us everyday were devoured though.
2. When buying drinks, buy a KNOWN brand. Haha. I say this because I bought a bottle of 'Cola' that wasn't Coke and NOBODY opened it. I think they were scared to try it.
3. Everybody has a sweet tooth so there's ALWAYS room for dessert. When full, people will reject snacks and fruit but where there's chocolate cake or brownies, they will find the space to fit 'em in.
Anyway, for the wraps, I used this recipe titled "Roomali Roti" on allrecipes.com and it was exactly like the Roti Prata they sell frozen at the supermarket! I'm sure it was missing the fatty ingredient that makes Roti Prata taste like Roti Prata, which I think is ghee, because they tasted a lot less flavourful, but other than that THEY WERE EXACTLY THE SAME. So yay, I made Roti Prata and I can make it everytime I eat curry from now one :D One more option to rice and bread. And it was so simple to make. The dough only needed 45 minutes of resting before shaping rolling and frying in the pan.
Then for the chocolate cake, I actually tried out this Chocolate Mayo Cake recipe, also from the same site. Mayo was like the highlight of today's menu. I had bought the large size Mayo bottle and was planning to make full use of it. When you can buy a lot of something cheaply it's always more cost effective to include recipes and that make use of it in your menu isn't it? So tuna mayo, egg mayo, thousand isle (which is actually a combination of ketchup and mayo) and of course, we have to have the Mayo cake shouldn't we?
Apparently, this cake has a bit of history dating back to the Depression where mothers baked this for their children when eggs and the like were very expensive (and mayo wasn't? oh well...). In the gist of it, instead of eggs and the oil component in cakes mayo is used in place. And when it baked up and I tasted it, I wouldn't have been able to tell it had mayo in it. It tasted like a chocolate cake! Which was a surprise and a relief because that meant it was edible and my guests would eat it and I didn't have to throw it away.
It was such a fun and I wouldn't have been able to imagine before that it would've been just that holding a party for people to fill up space in my house, eat the food I cooked, play and be completely undisturbed by my washing up and making sure everything was in its place. Even though some might say its as though nobody cared as long as they had free food and someone's house to bum around at, I was just contented to cook all those different recipes, even springing up those new untried recipes that some of them didn't try (maybe because that meant I got to try all sorts of different foods too), and to clean up after everyone(maybe because I'm so used to washing up) and having them completely ignore me while I did the work I had to do. Maybe I just enjoyed being busy doing something and being distracted from the food rather than just sitting at the table and chuck everything down and get really stuff in the middle of it all (maybe thats why they got so full so soon?). Haha.
Anyway, all in all, this was really an experience in itself and this won't be the last time I throw a party. Hopefully more adventurous and cooperative friends will be more gracious to leave me with fewer leftovers in the future.
That coupled with the fact that it does get rather lonely at times living in such a spacious apartment gave me a very good excuse to 'throw' a party for my senior friends today. It's my first time really planning for a party even though it was just for 5 people and I couldn't stop worrying myself whether the food would be enough. I kept thinking it wouldn't be and kept rearranging all the different combinations of foods I could make and thinking up a menu I could go with. Which all in the end burned down to over-thinking. I planned a menu with like a starter of snacks in the form of crackers and hard toast and veggie sticks with dips, the main of wraps with toppings like veggies, ham, egg mayo and tuna mayo, an extra snack (since people are always more interested in snacking at parties) of popcorn and chocolate cake as desert. And everyone was full after the wraps we had to bypass the popcorn! I even thought it was missing a hearty dish and was even contemplating a soup or curry. This is so funny. But all in all I think I did learn some things about party planning:
1. Foods that your guests are not accustomed to eating on regular basis will not be popular. Even if you might think they taste pretty good. I guess people are just not very adventurous on average. I made an avocado dip I thought went pretty well with the crackers and basically I felt I was the only one tucking into it. My guests weren't serial consumers of tuna or thousand island (some not even knowing what thousand isle was) so there were a lot of leftovers of those. Foods like the egg mayo and ham, foods common to us everyday were devoured though.
2. When buying drinks, buy a KNOWN brand. Haha. I say this because I bought a bottle of 'Cola' that wasn't Coke and NOBODY opened it. I think they were scared to try it.
3. Everybody has a sweet tooth so there's ALWAYS room for dessert. When full, people will reject snacks and fruit but where there's chocolate cake or brownies, they will find the space to fit 'em in.
Anyway, for the wraps, I used this recipe titled "Roomali Roti" on allrecipes.com and it was exactly like the Roti Prata they sell frozen at the supermarket! I'm sure it was missing the fatty ingredient that makes Roti Prata taste like Roti Prata, which I think is ghee, because they tasted a lot less flavourful, but other than that THEY WERE EXACTLY THE SAME. So yay, I made Roti Prata and I can make it everytime I eat curry from now one :D One more option to rice and bread. And it was so simple to make. The dough only needed 45 minutes of resting before shaping rolling and frying in the pan.
Then for the chocolate cake, I actually tried out this Chocolate Mayo Cake recipe, also from the same site. Mayo was like the highlight of today's menu. I had bought the large size Mayo bottle and was planning to make full use of it. When you can buy a lot of something cheaply it's always more cost effective to include recipes and that make use of it in your menu isn't it? So tuna mayo, egg mayo, thousand isle (which is actually a combination of ketchup and mayo) and of course, we have to have the Mayo cake shouldn't we?
Apparently, this cake has a bit of history dating back to the Depression where mothers baked this for their children when eggs and the like were very expensive (and mayo wasn't? oh well...). In the gist of it, instead of eggs and the oil component in cakes mayo is used in place. And when it baked up and I tasted it, I wouldn't have been able to tell it had mayo in it. It tasted like a chocolate cake! Which was a surprise and a relief because that meant it was edible and my guests would eat it and I didn't have to throw it away.
It was such a fun and I wouldn't have been able to imagine before that it would've been just that holding a party for people to fill up space in my house, eat the food I cooked, play and be completely undisturbed by my washing up and making sure everything was in its place. Even though some might say its as though nobody cared as long as they had free food and someone's house to bum around at, I was just contented to cook all those different recipes, even springing up those new untried recipes that some of them didn't try (maybe because that meant I got to try all sorts of different foods too), and to clean up after everyone(maybe because I'm so used to washing up) and having them completely ignore me while I did the work I had to do. Maybe I just enjoyed being busy doing something and being distracted from the food rather than just sitting at the table and chuck everything down and get really stuff in the middle of it all (maybe thats why they got so full so soon?). Haha.
Anyway, all in all, this was really an experience in itself and this won't be the last time I throw a party. Hopefully more adventurous and cooperative friends will be more gracious to leave me with fewer leftovers in the future.
posted by Chua at 12:41 AM
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