What food would you like to eat at a Christening?

[CantSleepWontSleep]

Service at 12:15, so food will be served at lunchtime.

Should I do buffet (saves prob of needing enough seats for everyone, or should we have enough seats anyway?) or proper hot meal?

Went to a first communion recently where they cooked lovely curry and rice, and baked salmon, but think there were less people there than we are likely to have (have invited about 100 inc kids, so guessing there'll be around 60 coming).

If hot food, can you suggest suitable easy meals (if they can be made the day before then so much the better, as then I might do them myself rather than get someone in)?

Similarly, if buffet, can you suggest components? We are a little bit posh, but not very .

All food needs to be dairy free, and there will also be veggies and fish allergic people present.

we did buffet - quiches and pizzas (cold) - think you can get dairy free equivalents? and then lots of salads and fench bread/cheeses, and lots of homemade cakes for pudding. We asked all our local friends to make a salad or cake, and we provided the protein conyent, and the wine and beer and soft drinks.

Jacket potatoes with a selection of hot and cold fillings and salads?

Hot fillings that you can make the day before and then reheat (chilli, sausage casserole, curry etc) will fill the hungry ones up and provide a Sunday lunch substitute, then your cold fillings and salads can be a bit posher and more summery.

We did this for dd's dedication and it seemed to work well.

Strewth, I don't envy you.

Is your entire entourage allergic?

I'd cancel

lol Des! dd is milk intolerant, and as it's her day I figured it was only fair to make all the food friendly for her (she'll grab whatever morsels appear to be out of reach ).

Quite liking the idea of jacket potatoes with yummy fillings.

Dd won't eat pizza (she just doesn't do bread, fussy madam!), but thanks for the suggestion panda.

How about a whole poached salmon, a whole ham or cold sliced beef and a vegetable terrine as main with salads (green, tomato, couscous, prawn, potato etc) and bread & cheese (as prev. suggested)? Maybe cold pie & quiche as well.

A large bowl of whole or halved strawberries - maybe bulked out with melon balls. And a large jug of cream.

I ordered a variety of individual cakes from Waitrose catering including cupcakes, meringues, viennese things etc. They were so popular I wished I'd ordered double!

Oh I've been through the Waitrose brochure Duchess, don't you worry, but sadly nearly everything in it contains milk .

Maybe I could do the meats like you suggest, with jacket potatoes (plus salads, bread etc).

What are your thoughts on chairs? I'm going to need enough for all of the adults at least aren't I? Bugger.

Eek - didn't realise it all had to be dairy-free!

Individual jellies? You could do grown-up flavours such as elderflower, cranberry, champagne etc and serve them in glasses.

(I also do great 'vodka & red bull' and 'mulled wine' jellies but they are surprisingly alcoholic!)

Cake

Oh posh jellies is a good idea that I hadn't thought of, as it's taking place in July, so very summery. Will have to think what to serve them in. Did you see the jelly on Great British menu by any chance? Very posh!

1dilemma - I like a person who's easily pleased!

Can you hire some from village hall, church or school? I borrowed chairs from the church for our christening lunch, for a small donation, and I'm doing the same next weekend with children-sized chairs from pre-school.

Otherwise ask 6 or so people to bring plastic outdoor chairs - they're light to move around and you can stack them out of the way when you don't need them.

Hire an extra box of wine glasses and serve the jellies in those.

When is the Christening?

Def do a buffet. Sugegstions being, cous cous with roasted pinenuts and coriander, home made houmus, cook a whole salmon, veggie chilli and rice, salad, taparnard, Homemade bruschetta always goes down well (french stick, sliced into little slices) toast one side, brush with olive oil. Let it go cold (and then becomes chewy) and add sundried tomatoes, mozarella (or can leave off obvioulsy) and parma ham or other cured meat. taste delicious. leg of ham fom local deli - costs about £60.00.

cheese and pineapple sticks

Where are our invites?

better to stand, more sociable, then you don't end up sitting talking to the samepeople, you can mingle

We hired some chairs from a proper hire company before, but that's a great suggestion to get them from the village hall - I go to toddler group there and they have loads.

macca - you've been non-comittal about my other invite, and yet you expect another one .

You're all making my mouth water now, but I'm def going to have get people in to do some of it (not necessarily a problem), as I'm lucky to get half an hour a day free from dd to allow me to prepare it!

Des - middle of July.

That's because I like to look popular with lots of different invites I'm actually very shy too

Are you serving food from the playhouse?

Sorry, X-post. It's in July.

A combination of hot and cold, naturally. Don't ignore the carnivores (a nice hunk of ham, at least).

All events should be seasonal. You must do strawberries and cream.

A vast pot of potato salad with new potatoes, mayo, spring onions, pepper, butter.

Do a combination of gastric requirements and supervise who eats what (if you need to).

yummy

Or the obligatory crushed new potatoes, tossed in olive oil, with chopped mint. And DD can eat it.

I think it depends how far people are travelling. My sons christenings had people from all over, so I wanted to make sure I fed them properly, not just a finger buffet. I opted for a mild curry with rice which is quite good on all sorts of allergy fronts and a veggie alternative, and fruit salad for pud - but strawberries is even easier. I got the wine glasses on free loan from Sainsburys.