Lets Talk about Birthday Food!

I went through a lot of different "menu" ideas in planning for their birthday party.  First I thought a BBQ, casual & easy right....The more I thought about it, I thought that so many people do a BBQ lets do something else.  So I though pizza...well that lasted about 2 seconds. I finally decided on simple finger/foods that are on a skewer. 

Fruit Skewers/Pasta salad/veggies

We just bought large packages of grapes, pineapple, and strawberries from Costco.  We purchased bamboo skewers (buy one get one free).  We cut the pineapple into smaller pieces and washed the strawberries and grapes and just started putting them on the skewers in an organized fashion of course.
I made a fuit dip that was very tasty as well.

Fruit Dip
8 oz cream cheese
1 jar of marshmallow cream
8 oz of sour cream
1 can sweetened condensed milk
puree in blender till smooth, pop in fridge for at least an hour before serving.

The Pasta salad was a recipe from a friend of mine.  I made it as follows.

Pasta Salad
2 bags of multicolor rotini pasta
1 1/2 bottles of Tuscan(has to be Tuscan) Italian salad dressing
2 cans sliced olives
1/2 container grape tomatoes from Costco
Two handfulls of pepperoni(cut into fours)
Two big handfuls of jarred artichoke from Costco

Cook pasta, strain, mix in small amount of olive oil, let cool in fridge, Mix everything together let it marinate for a day, add more dressing right before serving for best results! It was soooo Yummy!

Veggies, well veggies are veggies, I used Hidden Valley packet mix, 16 oz container of sour cream, mix, cut veggies and serve!

Main dishes

We made chicken and beef skewers as well as pigs in a blanket for the kiddies. 

The chicken skewers consisted on chicken thighs (from costco) thawed, cut into strips, marinated in a secret..(ok fine I'll give you the recipe) sauce, which by the way if you are reading this you HAVE to make this, I promise you'll like it, if you don't then well I'd give you something but none of you live next to me so I guess you will just have to take my word for it.

Chicken Marinade
1/4 cup veg. oil
1/4 cup soy sauce (you can use low sodium too)
2 T ketchup
2 T vinegar
1/4 t garlic powder
1/4 t pepper

Marinate chicken anywhere from 1-2 hours, or more if you want.

Stab chicken with skewers, grill and serve! YUM!

Beef Skewers
We had our in-laws make these for us to help out with the food load, well that and they are AWESOME cooks! From what they told me they just seasoned some steaks with Montreal steak seasoning, placed on skewers and also added mushrooms and red/yellow peppers in between.

Pigs in a blanket are a classic staple for one simple reason, they taste good and they are easy! Just follow package instructions on the cresent rolls! I made like 3 dozen of these and they were gone in under 7 min!

Cupcakes

I purchased a Groupon deal a couple of months back for Jubilee Cupcakes in Tacoma.  They tasted as amazing as they look.  I was not dissapointed!

The Beverage

A couple of weeks ago I had a strawberry mango limonata from The Olive Garden, it was sooooo good! It was fruity and refreshing, the perfect drink to make for a crown.  I searched for a recipe online and couldn't find one anywhere.  I finally found a similar recipe and just went off of the ingredients, I didn't use their measurements, but it came out very similar to Olive Garden's.

Strawberry Mango Limonata

Concentrated lemonade

Strawberry liquid smoothie mix, I found this at Cash and Carry

Mango liquid smoothie mix

Sprite, or any lemon/lime soda

Mix up your lemonade as directed, add in small amounts of the strawberry to taste, same with the mango, mix in the sprite until you taste the fizz.  Add a bunch of ice and serve!! It will be a hit I promise!

The other drink we had is called Brazillian Lemonade.  I'm unsure of the recipe since my in-laws made it. But I know it has lemonade, sweetened condensed milk, and sugar.  You also have to have a serious blender to make it since you have to blend it with ice to make it slushy like.

Thats all for today folks! I will be back tomorrow with all the details on the Twins cake and the Twins themselves!!