There is a lot to be said for a midday party. I can still get to bed at a normal time; cleanup can be done earlier; it can almost always be served as a buffet; everybody loves brunch food; and a Bloody Mary bar is pretty easy to pull off. All in all, a big win.
Yesterday we had about twenty people over for brunch. I took that as an opportunity to make way too much food (of
course) and try out a few new recipes. The key to a good brunch is the ability to return to the
buffet several times, both to try new things and to indulge in seconds of old favorites. This was the first time several of our friends had been to the new house, so there was a lot to see and a lot to eat.
First, set up on the bar were huge tubs, one with prosecco and cava, along with orange juice and pomegranate juice, as well as one with vodka, tequila, Bloody Mary mix, hot sauce, olives, onions and celery. It was all DIY, so drinks could be as strong or as weak as one desired.
We set up the buffet on the kitchen island, which fortunately is huge. On the buffet were bagels with cream cheese, scallion cream cheese, nova, tuna salad, whitefish salad and sliced tomato, onion and cucumber. Yes, we made the whitefish salad (and everything else) from scratch. We had three kinds of cheeses with crackers, a cheese blintz souffle with blueberry sauce, savory spinach, artichoke and mushroom bread pudding (which was outrageously good and I will be making it
again and again and again), deviled eggs, mini spinach and goat cheese quiches, watermelon and mint salad, banana bread, blueberry muffins, cherry-white chocolate muffins and a coffee cake with actual coffee in it.
The food was very good, the company was excellent, and 6PM the house was cleaned up and
