When I first described the Christmas party I planned for my family two years ago and immediately called it the “First Annual Watson/Volk Christmas party” my parents laughed a little. Wasn’t I getting a bit ahead of myself? Work on one before assuming there’d be more. But I never go into something like a giant catered party with anything but the highest expectations. Which is why now, three years later, we’ve arrived at the “Third Annual” edition of the event. We have a theme. Check. We have some rough menu sketches. Check. We even have excited to-be guests.
This year’s theme will be “Heavenly Hosts”. Thanks mom. I wanted something angelic to represent the season, but didn’t want the kitsch of making it all about heaven and Hell. So we’re leaving the devil aspect out of it. Yes, I want to do an angel’s food cake, but no, there will be no deviled eggs (or devil’s food cake for that matter). It’s going to be on the elegant side instead.
So for the rest of the menu (since Newfoundland probably doesn’t have enough eggs for me to do a whole party based on angels food cakes…) I was thinking my dad, my brother, my mom, and I would each have a dish labeled “So-and-so’s Heaven”. My dad’s heaven would include a braised beef dish, my brother’s would probably be sushi, my mom’s? She has her heart set on some brownies, I think. Which leaves a whole lot of room for savoury dishes.
I was thinking philedelphia cream cheese (the angel commercials) would be appropriate, so I could do some kind of cream cheese dip and then do a raw version with nuts, and then I thought I’d just do a few more raw dishes that taste cheese-y. Probably there’ll be a lot of cashews involved. That’s good for dips and sauces, so maybe…hmm…
I was also thinking I wanted a lot of sourdough involved as the “manna of heaven”. It’s a more natural and traditional yeast. None of this fast-acting stuff, but it could take 10 days to make a yeast, and that’s if everything goes smoothly. A friend here in the city offered me some of his to start mine off but I think I’ll kill it by the time I get to Newfoundland. There’s one good bakery in St. John’s that might give me some of their starter, though I’m not even sure if they do sourdough. So the bread concept is there, and worst comes to worse, I can probably find Premiere Moisson flown in…sad, but true. No, I will try my best and making tons and tons of bread. It’ll be my Christmas challenge. Turns out that in terms of glycemic index a sourdough made with white flour is better for you than even a whole wheat bread made with regular yeast!! Not in terms of minerals and vitamins maybe, but in terms of digestibility and spiking sugar levels. The whole wheat is really tough on your system, to the point where old people who eat it have a lot of trouble…Take that, Dempsters.
Anyway, so with my raw dips and desserts, maybe a “piled high apple pie”, something beefy, something sushi (no salmon, trout, char or anything farmed Atlantic in this household, thanks, unless it just came off the wharf in unpolluted waters, and I don’t know where those are), and then I’ve got to figure out what my heaven is and it’s got to be something savoury. Or it can be sweet and then I have to come up with more “heavenly” or “angelic” savoury dishes.
Thoughts? Suggestions? As my highschool French teacher would say: “Questions? Commentaires?”
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