More Q&A and Winners!

First down to business.

The three lucky winners of the Fiber One Chocolate spa gift packages are:

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

11
74
14

Coco
Chocolate mousse, especially those with dark chocolate, the bitter kind!

Sarah
Brownies.  And hot fudge.  Wait - a hot fudge brownie sundae... yes, that's it.

Danielle
Yum! I'd love to be entered :)

Send me your addresses girls and I will make sure these get to you!!

Q&A Part 2:

This question came about after my post about the bridal shower I helped plan for my friend Jen!

Sabrina (aka Rhodey Girl) asked:

Could you do a post on how you managed the time for it all? Did you prep mostly everything the day before? Was the frittata easily sliced?

I'd love to elaborate :)

Whenever you're preparing a big meal for many people (in this case about 3o), it is always a good idea and most of the time NECESSARY to plan ahead and figure out what can be prepared ahead of time.

The Shower was on a Saturday at 11:00AM, at a location 45min away.

I'll go through each item and how it was broken down:
Shopping:

• Most was done on the Wednesday before. I got all the items I could at this 1 store which has the best prices. The items had to sit in my car for a while so I didn't get any of the dairy or meat items.
• I also wanted to get the berries later so they were fresher
• Definitely couldn't get everything at 1 place
• In the end there were 7 trips to 5 places haha...good thing I like grocery shopping, and good thing there is a 24hr Shaws nearby for those last minute "oh crap I forgot..." moments.

Muffins:

• Because the scones are more reliant on peak freshness than the muffins, I chose to do the muffins Friday night. They'd still be served less than 24hours after baking.
• I made both the blueberry corn muffins, followed by the Chocolate Coconut Banana muffins on Friday night and let cool completely before placing in large Zip loc bags

Scones:

• Scones are one of those things that are really best when fresh from the oven, so I really wanted to bake these the morning of.
  
• There was some parts I could do beforehand though. On Friday night I prepped the dry ingredients to which I then cut in the butter. This mixture went into the freezer.
  
• The dry ingredients/butter came out Saturday morning, I added the wet ingredients, shaped, cut, and baked!
• For the Scones I also made clotted cream, this was done Friday night as well and just sat in the fridge until it was ready to serve.

Fruit and Yogurt Station:

• I was really excited about this idea, and 1 reason was that NO PREP NEEDED!
• When we arrived at the bridal shower house, we placed everything in bowls and set it out!

Fruit Platter:

• All the fruit was cut up Friday night.
  
• We also assembled the whole fruit platter and just wrapped it up tight with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge.

NOTE: We have an extra fridge in the basement which was KEY to this operation. We would of really had to clean/empty our fridge other wise.

Frittatas:

• There's nothing too appealing about an egg dish that's made the day before, so these definitely had to be cooked the morning of. However, getting all the ingredients prepped saved TONS of time.
• I blanched the asparagus on Thursday night and placed in the fridge until needed.
• I grated the Gruyere cheese Thursday and placed that in a container in the fridge until needed.
• Friday, we cooked up the chicken sausage as well as the balsamic caramelized onions and placed in containers until needed.
• Saturday morning, I mixed up the egg mixture, placed the ingredients in the pan, poured the egg mix on top, and baked.
• When I arrived at the house I placed both Frittatas in the oven on like 250 to keep warm
• NOTE ON THE ASPARAGUS - was it easy to cut?? Well it wasn't hard, but because the egg is so much softer, next time I would pre-cut the asparagus into bite size pieces so that you wouldn't need to cut through the asparagus when cutting a slice of frittata! The other frittata was fine :)

Chicken Salad

• Thursday I cooked the chicken, let cool, then bagged it and placed it in the fridge
• Friday I made the chicken salad; cut/shredded the chicken, sliced the grapes, and cut the celery...mixed it all up with the dressing then placed in large zip locs.
• I didn't want to assemble the sandwiches until we arrived so the pitas would not be soggy. I had some helpers assemble the sandwiches that morning :)

Others:

• Jocy made her penuche cake Thursday night because it keeps well.
• The only prep needed for the salad was slicing strawberries Friday night.
• The little brie/ham/apple crostinis were assembled at the shower with the only prep being cutting the brie and the baguette Friday night.

All in all it was not an overwhelming amount of work. Jocy and I didn't get to bed til about 1am Friday night then were up at 5:30am Saturday...so the lack of sleep wasn't great, but that was the worst of it :) Everything else went smoothly and it's KEY to have a helper. Sous Chef Jocy did a lot of the cutting and interim dish washing!