What types of foods make good ingredients?
Choose menu items that include the basic ingredients you would normally purchase for your everyday menus. If you eat lots of fresh vegetables, definitely find creative ways to feature them in your party food. Also, pantry items make nice additions to any party menu; olives, sun-dried tomatoes or garbanzo beans. How to plan ahead for extra food When you decide on your party recipes, try to do the prep work in advance such as cleaning and chopping, but leave the assembly for the party. This will allow relatively quick assembly as needed for your party and will allow you to use the basic ingredients in other dishes later in the week. In the cases where you are making an assembled main dish, consider whether leftovers can be frozen for use at a later date. Cheeses, bread, meats, casserole dishes, etc. can usually be frozen if done the following day. Some Recipes Using Leftovers For a recent party, I prepared Paula Dean’s chicken bacon wraps (but I used my own dry rub mix). Rather than prep
