Party Food for Dummies

My friend and I recently just threw our best friend a surprise 18th birthday party. While the party was a success, there was a lot of stress and commotion before the party, and during the stages of planning, especially with the food. It's hard to pick what food you want to serve, how many snacks? how many main dishes? what type of dessert? should we make the food or should we buy it?  We ended up creating a pretty good menu, but there are so many quick and easy options for party food so here are some!

Starters:

Hummus and Pita
Everyone loves a good dip of hummus and pita. It's not that heavy and it that kind of food where you just have to go and get just ONE more bite. You can buy both pita and ready made hummus so there would be no prep work. But if your into cooking, check out our ALPHA'S home made recipe

Chips and Dip
This is probably the most classic and cliche party starter food universally.  You can have many types of chips and many types of dips. The dips I love are salsa, guacamole and sour cream. Again, if your lazy you don't have to make any of it, and just buy it which makes the prep work easier. Our
ALPHA has created a yummy guacamole recipe if you want to make your own







Veggies with Ranch or salad
If your parents are anal about the 'healthy' thing, and if you want to keep your menu light and healthy, you can never go wrong with veggies and a nice dressing whether it be ranch, thousand island, or Cesar! Another healthy option is a salad. Just cut some lettuce and vegetables, put on a sauce and its good. My favorite salad dressing is balsamic vinegar!





Bread
Carbs are a crowd favorite.  You can have bread in any kind of way the most common are garlic bread, or bruschetta which is bread topped with sliced tomatoes, olive oil and basil. Both are easy to prep and equally delicious. Recipe's for bruschetta are all over the internet and it should say the prep time is less than 10 minutes because it really is.

Store bought junk food


If you JUST want to keep it simple, and your doing putting a lot of preparation into your main course, then even store bought chips and junk food never fail to please your guests. Although its not as classy or chic, its still tastes good.








Main Course:
Go Mexican:

I love Mexican food! The easiest Mexican food I could think of to make is probably fajitas and quesadillas.  These foods could also serve an intimate purpose as people can make their own fajitas, and choose which dips to put on their quesadilla. What's also good is that if your making chips and dip for a starter, you can just use that for your main courses as well! 

Go Italian:

Italian is always the easiest to go. You can order from dominos, or pizza hut and make it simple and fast, or you can be more intimate and do a create your own pizza sort of thing. Not only that, cooking pasta is also very simple as you can buy pasta sauces! You can make cold or hot pasta because either way its good.

Go Barbeque:

If you have a grill in your back yard and hosting a party there, a barbeque is a fun and the best way to go. Meat skewers, vegetable skewers, corn on the grill, and even hot dogs and ham burgers you just have so many options! With chips and dip, and some veggies with dip, the barbeque is the perfect way to have healthy but also meaty food. Even for a vegetarian, you can always have vegetable's on the grill so a barbeque can be satisfying for everyone.

Dessert:

You could literally go any way with your desserts.  Store bought or home made brownies, cookies, or even just one big cake to celebrate the party! For the birthday party my friend and I threw, we created a cake, but also had small cupcakes for people that wanted a smaller bite or something sweet before the cake cutting. If you want to make things more intimate and more fun, you can always set out vanilla or chocolate ice-cream and let your guests choose what toppings to put on their dessert. It's fun for them to create their own dessert, and its less stressful for you!

Love,
ALPHA