We held our Fist Full of Cocktails fundraising party on Saturday, and everything went well. We had 53 guests who each paid $50 to attend, and I am pretty sure we had 53 satisfied customers. We painstakingly planned the menu down to every detail (I am joking about the painstaking—we had a great time getting together to work on the menu, since it usually also involved food).
We decorated Sandy and Brian’s backyard with a western/Mexican theme.
We set up the bar, and we were ready for our guests to arrive. Did I forget to mention we did a little cooking? Well, we did a lot of cooking! Lucky for us, everyone came with a good appetite, and no one said they were on a diet. I kept bringing food out, and guests kept eating. I love when that happens!
We started everything off by setting
spiced nuts along with Paula’s black-eyed pea salsa on the cocktail tables (See how cute the nuts are in the margarita glass?). Once everyone started arriving, we passed jalapeno poppers, veggie empanadas, and chorizo quesadillas. We also passed crackers with pepper jack cheese cut into the shape of small cactus. The cactus shape with thanks to a cute cookie cutter Sandy bought.
I told you about the veggie quesadilla I tested for the party that didn’t make it to the menu, well it was because Sandy’s empanadas had almost the same filling. She used piecrust circles and filled them with corn, black beans, zucchini and red pepper. The empanadas were delicious. I needed to come up with another quesadilla idea, so I remembered the
queso dip I made a few months back. I decided to deconstruct the dip and turn the ingredients into a quesadilla recipe. I loved these quesadillas, and my family including my son liked these quesadillas too. Our guests gobbled them up, so I assume they liked them too.
Chorizo Quesadillas
2 links of Mexican chorizo
1 poblano pepper
3-4 cups shredded pepper jack cheese
½ cup sliced green onions
½ cup chopped cilantro
8 6-inch flour tortillas
vegetable oil
Broil the poblano pepper until the skin is black, and place the pepper in a paper bag for 10 minutes. Take the pepper out of the paper bag and peel the skin. Cut off the stem and remove the seeds, and chop the pepper in small pieces. Remove casings from chorizo and cook crumbling the sausage into small pieces until cooked through. Brush vegetable oil on a grill or skillet, and add one tortilla. Top the tortilla with ¼ of the cheese, chorizo, onions and cilantro, then place a second tortilla on top of the mixture. Once the bottom tortilla has browned, flip over and brown the other side. The quesadilla is done when both tortillas are browned and the cheese in the center is melted. Cut into wedges and serve. Makes 4 quesadillas.
I made 110 jalapeno poppers for Fist Full of Cocktails. I was worried we would be having jalapeno poppers for days, but they were gone by the end of the evening. I am finding it hard to give an exact recipe for these poppers. It is really more of a ratio. I used about two pounds of bacon, 55 jalapenos and 36 ounces of cream cheese.
Jalapeno Poppers
From Pioneer Woman
Jalapenos
Bacon slices, cut into 1/3 pieces
Cream Cheese
Cut jalapenos in half and scrape out the seeds and the ribs with a spoon. Just a word of warning: If you don’t want your eyes and fingers to burn, wear safety glasses and gloves. Fill the jalapeno halves with cream cheese and wrap with bacon slice and secure with a toothpick. Bake in a 375° oven for 20-25 minutes or until the bacon is browned. You don’t want the pepper to become soggy, so you can turn on the broiler if the bacon isn’t cooking fast enough. Just watch them carefully.
Fist Full of Cocktails to be continued…
Sandy and Brian’s backyard looked magical on the night of our fundraising party. We were lucky with the weather. It was a hot day and a warm evening, and we don’t get many of those in our area. Les was wondering why we couldn’t have had this kind of weather for the tiki party last year when we were shivering in our Hawaiian shirts and shorts. This year he was dressed in jeans and a long sleeved shirt (Oh, the irony). We set out the tabletop heaters in case the evening got a bit chilly, but we never needed them. Our guests really got into the theme this year digging western wear out of their closets, and coming ready to have a good time. You can plan the best party ever, but you need great guests for a great party, and we had them!
We consider our party a cocktail party, and my friend Melissa who came to help us out, said that it is only cocktail party because we don’t offer any utensils. Everything on the menu is considered finger food, so we can squeak by with no utensils, but this year we really pushed it. I told you about the menu items we passed and set on the tables in my last post. We also offered some other more substantial food on Sandy and Brian’s large patio table. We put out brisket sandwiches, ribs (Paula used a different recipe, but this one is close), tequila lime chicken wings, jalapeno corn bread, watermelon triangles, veggies and dip, and (this is where we pushed it) bean shooters. What are bean shooters you ask? Well, we served beans in small paper cups, so you can shoot them into your mouth and without using a fork. My daughter came up with the idea when we were trying to decide the menu for our party. We knew we weren’t going to offer utensils, but we wanted to offer baked beans, so she came up with bean shooters. I’m not sure they worked since everyone kept asking for silverware, but we thought it was a cute idea, and we didn’t have any leftovers.
For dessert, we passed squares of Texas sheet cake (I think Sandy used another recipe, but the recipe I linked to is close to the recipe she used). We also passed squares of apple pie bars. I found the recipe for the apple pie bars in Food and Wine and I thought it was perfect as written, so I didn’t change a thing.
We had a great time planning and throwing “A Fist Full of Cocktails,” and we have already started thinking about next year’s menu!
