It was the newly six-year-old\u2019s birth\u00adday party yes\u00adter\u00adday. I booked a pack\u00adage at a loc\u00adal com\u00admunity centre that provides party lead\u00aders, games for 45 minutes in a gym, and a private room with tables and chairs for lunch and cake after the games. The party lead\u00aders did all the dec\u00ador\u00adat\u00ading and clean-up after\u00adwards, as well! I organ\u00adized most of the food for the ran\u00addom assort\u00adment of around 20 kids, aged between 4 and 6, and their par\u00adents. Which meant provid\u00ading stuff the kids would eat, and stuff the par\u00adents would eat.<\/p>\n
One thing I dis\u00adcovered a couple of years ago: most kids love grape toma\u00adtoes and sug\u00adar snap peas, even if some insist on open\u00ading the lat\u00adter and only eat\u00ading the mini\u00adature peas inside. Those all dis\u00adap\u00adpeared quickly again. The cheesy crack\u00aders went, the grain+seed glu\u00adten-free crack\u00aders were mostly ignored. The adults loved the wal\u00adnut-olive tapen\u00adade (recipe from Eat Like a Dino\u00adsaur: Recipe &<\/span> Guide\u00adbook for Glu\u00adten-free Kids<\/a>) but the kids mostly ignored it. They went for the mini bagels with straw\u00adberry cream cheese instead; the occa\u00adsion\u00adal kid pre\u00adferred the the plain cream cheese. My hus\u00adband made 70 small chick\u00aden kebabs which I paired with the \u201cnot pea\u00adnut sauce\u201d almond-but\u00adter based satay sauce from Paleo Com\u00adfort Foods: Homestyle Cook\u00ading for a Glu\u00adten-Free Kit\u00adchen<\/a> (since there are a few kids with pea\u00adnut aller\u00adgies in the group). Some of the kids ate the kebabs, the par\u00adents ate a lot, and the remain\u00ading few were pol\u00adished off by the party help\u00aders after the kids and par\u00adents had had their fill. I also made car\u00adrot-beet\u00adroot frit\u00adters<\/a> (those are beets for you North Amer\u00adic\u00adans), which the par\u00adents liked and the kids mostly ignored. I thought they were good, and even bet\u00adter with a dol\u00adlop of tzatziki on them.<\/p>\n For dessert we had store-bought mini\u00adature cook\u00adies, and my son made marsh\u00admal\u00adlow lol\u00adli\u00adpops<\/a>. Let\u2019s see, sug\u00adar, coated with sug\u00adary white chocol\u00adate and dipped in even more sug\u00adar? What 6\u2011year-old could res\u00adist? Very few, as it turned out, although a couple of kids in the group don\u2019t really like sweet things and turned down the marsh\u00admal\u00adlows. These were the same kids who turned down birth\u00adday cake afterwards.<\/p>\n The birth\u00adday cake was a basic min\u00adim\u00adal-flour chocol\u00adate cake, with lots of frost\u00ading and sprinkles. I like these basic cake recipes; they\u2019re the sort where when the cake is almost done you can turn off the oven and leave it overnight to fin\u00adish and cool down. Light sponges that need pre\u00adcise tim\u00ading are too much work I find; things hap\u00adpen and I don\u2019t get back to the oven in time and they\u2019re dry and hor\u00adrible. A dense, rich cake has a lot more lee\u00adway in terms of bak\u00ading, and a small piece goes a long way as well.<\/p>\n After\u00adwards, the kids all piled out the door to the lawn out\u00adside the com\u00admunity centre and ran around for half an hour, a lovely end to a fun party. As I\u2019m writ\u00ading this, my daugh\u00adter is hav\u00ading a long nap, recov\u00ader\u00ading from all the excite\u00adment! And we still have lots of cake, satay sauce, and a few frit\u00adters in the fridge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was the newly six-year-old\u2019s birth\u00adday party yes\u00adter\u00adday. I booked a pack\u00adage at a loc\u00adal com\u00admunity centre that provides party lead\u00aders, games for 45 minutes in a gym, and a private room with tables and chairs for lunch and cake after the games. The party lead\u00aders did all the dec\u00ador\u00adat\u00ading and clean-up after\u00adwards, as well! \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cParty Food\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-11"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1059"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1061,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions\/1061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}