Recipe for An Amazing Memorial Weekend Cook-out

Greetings!

I know everyone is looking forward to getting out the grill to celebrate Memorial Day, so it seems like a good time to consider all the elements that make cook-outs a success.

Food

Of course, your best option is to allow us to take care of the details for you. We can bring you a barbecue that your neighbors will talk about all summer, but if you want to do it yourself, play to your strengths. Keep the flavors simple and remember your guests. Will there be lots of kids? Be sure to have kid-friendly food like hot dogs and hamburgers. Mostly grown-ups? Go with something a little more sophisticated like grilled shrimp or kabobs.

Music

Don’t forget the influence atmosphere has on the success of an event. Put together a playlist on your MP3 player with tunes all your friends will enjoy. Remember to keep the music age-appropriate and fun. Group dances are an especially good way of getting everyone on their feet.

Entertainment

Don’t be shy about bringing the fun. Celebrate summer by dusting off the croquet set, badminton nets and even horseshoes. Giving people a focus for their attention stimulates conversation and draws in the more shy members of your party.

Finishing Touches

They say the devil is in the details. To host a really special event, try stringing lights – Chinese lanterns, Christmas lights, some stores even offer solar string lights for summer events. Pull the theme together with colorful paper products and thoughtful party favors. Your neighbors and friends will appreciate the effort you made to make them feel special.

Tags: Memorial Day

Dinner and a Show

Let us be your personal chef for a day! Katy’s Catering offers a take on the underground restaurant trend. For a reasonable fee, we will come in to your home with the ingredients for a sumptuous meal. We will then show you how to cook it and serve it to you and a handful of friends. We have a selection of menu recommendations that we will discuss with you personally. Once you decide what you would like to learn to make and set the date, you can leave everything else to us.

Katy’s Catering Personal Chef Services is perfect for an intimate date or for a small dinner party and would make a great graduation gift for a young chefs going off to college. If you are in town on vacation, we can even come in to show you how to make a gourmet meal with only the equipment in your condo.

We know how much you value your time and resources. Forget the shopping list and leftovers. For less than the price of an expensive cooking class, we bring the experience to you. We offer menu options at approximately $30 per person. Call us today to schedule an event to remember.

Tags: edutainment

Farm to Table

Having just celebrated Earth Day, I thought it would be the perfect time to talk about the farm-to-table cooking. As I hope you have seen, there is a grassroots movement in America to return to fresh, local cooking. It is both a culinary movement and an environmental one. It is easy to see that food so fresh it was in the ground an hour or two before will offer incredible flavor.  More and more chefs keep herb and vegetable gardens at their restaurants for this very reason.  All they have to do is walk out back or on the roof, pick some rosemary, thyme, bay leaves onions, carrots and so on and they have a magnificent base for soups, stews and sauces.

When it isn’t possible to source ingredients on the premises, the next best alternative are Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) or local farmers markets. Of course, these are great for home consumers as well. You may already have a farmers market nearby that you frequent for tomatoes, peaches and other luscious summer produce. You may not know about CSAs though. In the last few years, these home delivery co-ops have grown in popularity because they allow small farms to have a broader consumer base and they allow consumers a wider variety of fresh, local organic produce. The organizations enlist contributing farms and offer home delivery produce subscriptions. So a consumer gets a weekly box with a variety of fruits and vegetables and small independent farms have the ability to focus on one or two crops without worrying about distribution.

Whether you shop at a farmer’s market or through a CSA (visit localharvest.org for more information) you also do your part for the environment. For starters, growing native species close to home helps maintain the delicate ecological balance needed for sustainability. Even better, with gas prices climbing up and up, locally-grown food doesn’t waste gas and money on transportation and limits pollution.

So I encourage you to get out there and explore! Mix it up in the kitchen with fresh, local ingredients and enjoy the intense flavors you get in return.

Tags: Earth Day, Farm-to-Table

Savory and Sustainable

I have been working lately on some great new recipes to show off at the 3^rd Annual Clean Coast Expo on April 21. The event is hosted by the Clean Coast Sponsorship to demonstrate environmentally-friendly initiatives, ideas and resources from local exhibitors. I love that this organization empowers us – the community who lives here – to ensure that we have beautiful, clean beaches for future generations to enjoy.

So be sure to come by to support the future of our beaches, learn ways to help and sample locally-grown, sustainable, tasty dishes. We will offer spring roll purses for salads (completely edible, no waste), fresh-herb basted pork and beef tenderloin (locally –grown), lettuce roll-ups with charred romaine, feta and bacon (completely edible, no waste), and the piece de resistance – the figgy piggy with sweet port sauce (if you don’t know what that is, you will have to come to the Eric Meyer Civic Center to find out).

In other news, it’s been very busy around here catering some wonderful events.

We served an upscale beach wedding in Gulf Shores for 250 people with beef tenderloin, shrimp and heavy hors d’oeuvres.

We catered a fund raiser at Mobile Christian School for 300 offering an antipasto platter, appetizer shrimp Alfredo, chicken Marsala, spring roll purses with sesame bread sticks, vegetables and tiramisu.

Sunday we served a brunch to celebrate a 50^th wedding anniversary with shrimp creole, chicken Alfredo and dessert of Key lime square tarts with coconut crust and Cheesecake with turtle sauce on the side.

We are thrilled to be a part of these celebrations and look forward to making your next event special as well. In the meantime, we will see you at the Clean Coast Expo.

Tags: area events

Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

Think of something you love to eat but never cook. Mexican food? Thai?

Why don’t you ever make it at home? Not only is it immensely satisfying to conquer a new style of cooking, it’s broadens your skills for cooking things you’ve made a million times.  Fear is usually what keeps people from trying something new, but you can overcome that fear by starting small.

Just choose one dish.

Think of something you really love and just give that one thing a try. You don’t have to make an enormous Mexican feast to try making enchiladas. Focus on just the enchiladas and serve them with a salad.

Include the family.

Make your culinary adventure a family affair by having the kids help in the kitchen. Since you are making something new, you have no more or less expertise than they do. If you include them in the process, they are much more likely to embrace the new food you are putting before them. It’s a great way to win over picky eaters.

Tell me what you decide to make and how it went – I would love to share in your adventure.

 

Meatless Mondays and Lenten Cuisine

Now that we are past the fun and excitement of Mardi Gras, many folks elect to give up something for Lent. It’s becoming more and more common for people to choose to give up meat. It makes sense from an ecological standpoint. Feeding grain to animals and then feeding animals to people is costly and when you factor in rising gas prices and transportation costs, making that lifestyle change benefits everyone. But it doesn’t have to be a sacrifice.

If you are one of the growing throng of people considering reducing your meat consumption either for Lent or on an ongoing basis for “Meatless Mondays” here are a few ways to enjoy your meal without feeling deprived.

1.    Pasta. Comfort foods like pastas are easy to make and include numerous taste options. When you forego meat choose a pasta variety that is higher in protein – such as Barilla Plus. Each serving has 17 grams of protein from vegetable sources. Experiment with sauces and try something new – fresh pesto is delicious and easy to make. All you need is a little olive oil, fresh basil, fresh garlic, nuts – pine nuts, walnuts or almonds – and a food processor.

2.       Soup. If your meal begins with soup you may feel fuller sooner and take in fewer calories.  Soups are quick and easy to make and come in as many varieties as there are cooking ingredients. Start with a veggie stock and add in whatever you want. You waste less and breathe new life into leftovers by adding them to a soup pot. Be creative. If you like foods together outside a pot, you will probably like them together in soup as well. To play it safe, you might want to begin by chopping an onion, a couple of celery stalks and a couple of carrots and some garlic cloves. Saute them in olive oil in a stock pot and when they are soft add the stock. Once the stock boils, turn down the heat and add whatever other ingredients you want. Simmer until all the ingredients are soft and thoroughly cooked and enjoy.

3.       Casseroles. When in doubt, cover it in cheese and bake for an hour! Seriously, almost any casserole recipe you have can probably be served as a vegetarian dish by simply removing the meat. You may be surprised how little you miss the meat when you have your favorite flavors properly mingled and swirling around your tongue.

How are you making Lent special? Let us know. We would love to hear your comments.

Tags: Lent, Meatless Mondays

Mardi Gras and King Cake

If you are new to the area you may wonder what Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday all the fuss is about. Clearly we have a long-standing tradition of parades and indulgence that goes all the way back to the French Acadian settlers who brought Roman Catholic tradition and practice to a wild and turbulent region over 200 years ago.

Originally the purpose of Mardi Gras was to use up the food that is forbidden during Lenten fasts – meat, eggs, milk and so on. Over time the natural joie de vivre of the people evolved into numerous parades and celebrations.

One Mardi Gras tradition is the King Cake. These rich, festive cakes contain a small plastic baby and the person who gets the piece with the baby buys the next cake or has the next party. The fun begins after Twelfth Night and concludes on Mardi Gras. An office, a neighborhood, a classroom etc. continues to have a celebration as long as the person with the baby does their job and brings the cake the next day.

If you would like to make your own King Cake, there are many recipes available online. Here is a quick and easy version. King Cake.

Next post we will talk about surviving the season of Lenten fasting with style and flavor.

Tags: King Cake, Mardi Gras