To say the last week was busy would be quite the understatement.
I had class Monday & Tuesday, spent Wednesday and Thursday cooking/catering a wedding rehearsal and had class Friday morning. I was exhausted when I got home on Friday, but the whole week went so well I wouldn’t change it for anything.
If you remember back in June I had my very first catering job – a retirement party for one of my high school teachers. At the same time I was approached about catering that, they asked if I would also be interested in catering a wedding rehearsal for their son and his fiancee.
Of course I said yes.
The theme for the evening was Greek food. Other than the food I did for the retirement party and my new obsession with chicken souvlaki, I’d never really made Greek food before. Fortunately, I was armed with plenty of recipes from little old Greek ladies and with a whole lot of help from my friend, Taylor, and a practice run, I got to work.
We prepared all of the food at Taylor’s apartment, and it was basically non-stop cooking for two days.
I got to Taylor’s at 11:45 on Wednesday, we started cooking at noon, took a 30 minute break for some tea (honey tulsi chai — yum!) & about an hour for dinner, and finally called it quits for the day at 1:30am after making 160 melomakarona (honey cookies), two pans of baklava, two batches or tiropita (cheese triangles), two lots of karidopita (walnut cake) and marinating the chicken for the souvlaki (we did 12x the original recipe!!).
We set our alarms for 7am and started cooking as soon as they went off. I got to work on the two batches of spanakopita, while Taylor diligently chopped all of the vegetables and prepared the dressing for the village salad. We stopped for a few minutes to pick up some much needed coffee, then headed back to finish with the Greek spaghetti and chicken souvlaki.
By the time all of the food was done and we had loaded my car up with all of the food – about 1:30, it was off to set up for the rehearsal dinner.
Once we were there, it was mostly a matter of plating everything, finishing off the Greek spaghetti to warm it up for serving, and making sure everything was ready for when people were expected to arrive around 5:00.
Fortunately, the whole event went really smoothly. Taylor and I got lots of compliments on the food and we quite literally couldn’t wipe the smiles off our faces.
Everyone seemed to have a wonderful time. There was lots of laughter, conversation, and celebrating. Taylor and I both feel truly blessed to have been able to be part of this special day for such a wonderful family. We now feel like honorary Greeks and couldn’t be happier with how everything turned out.
Thanks to Michael and Mary for allowing us to be part of this special moment and congratulations to Justin and Amy!
